Software > Open Source, Buying & Owning Software

Free and Open Source Software for the Macintosh

By Michelle Murrain

This article is an overview of the wide variety of options for use of open source software on the Macintosh, from internet applications, to productivity applications.

Free and Open Source Foundations

Like Windows, the Macintosh operating system is a proprietary system. The user interface is closed source, and major upgrades to the operating system have a cost. Unlike Windows, however, Apple's OS X (for 10) is based on a UNIX foundation, and because of this, it is possible to take advantage of the very wide range of free and open source software available for UNIX. Further, the UNIX foundation for OS X is a free and open source derivative of the BSD operating system (a FOSS UNIX variant,) called “Darwin.” Thus, the source code for the “innards” of the Macintosh operating system are freely available.

But, for most people, this is academic – it doesn't really matter. They want to know what free and open source software they can run on their Macintosh. There are plenty!

Internet Applications

The Mozilla group of internet applications, including Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird and the suite Seamonkey, are all cross-platform, and work natively on OS X. Plugins for these appplications work as well. Firefox is the increasingly popular web browser, Thunderbird is an e-mail client, and Seamonkey is a suite of tools that includes an IRC client, newsgroup reader, and HTML editor as well.

Camino is a Mac-only fork of Firefox, which has been optimized to work with the Mac OS X. Because it shares the same engine as Firefox, it has much of the same functionality. But it is not as extensible as Firefox, and Firefox add-ins don't work in Camino. Many people find Camino a better browser for the Mac than Firefox.

Flock is also a fork of Firefox, but has a lot of added tools, such as support for del.icio.us bookmarking, flickr photos and blogging platforms (so you can write and edit your blog entries offline, and send them to the blog after you are done).

One of the most popular free and open source internet applications for the Mac is called Adium. Adium is a multiprotocol instant messenger (IM) client (that means that you can use it to connect to multiple IM networks, such as AIM, Gtalk, Yahoo messenger and others. Adium is very configurable and extensible.

Colloquy and X-Chat Aqua are two open source chat (IRC and SILC) clients. IRC (SILC is a secure implementation of IRC) clients allow you to connect to IRC servers, which host real-time chat. A lot of open source projects have IRC chat channels where you can get your questions answered – so having an IRC client is a good idea.

View larger image of X-chat IRC Client

Productivity Applications

It's important to be able to get work done, as well as surf the web, and read email. On the Mac, for the most part, people have depended either on Apple's productivity tools, including Appleworks and iWork. In addition, Microsoft has a version of its Office Suite for the Mac (sans Access, including a program called Entourage instead of Outlook.) However, there is a good alternative – Open Office. Open Office is a full-featured office suite that can read and write MS Office documents. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation package, and database. In addition, in has an HTML editor, Equation editor, and drawing program.

At this time, there are two ways to use Open Office on the Macintosh. Neither is perfect, but both are usable. The official Open Office version for the Mac uses Apple's version of X11 (Xwindows,) which must be installed (it is on the installation media that comes with a new Mac, but it is not installed by default.) This does allow you to use the most recent version of Open Office.

NeoOffice is a port of Open Office that works in the Mac Aqua user interface, and does not require X11. However, it lags behind the official Open Office version in terms of features and bugfixes. There is, however, an official Open Office Aqua version in the works, but the release date is currently unknown.

View larger image of NeoOffice

Another useful open source productivity application that is available for the Mac, is called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). GIMP has a feature set that is quite similar to Adobe's Photoshop, although the user interface is quite different. GIMP allows you to crop and resize images, adjust colors, contrast and brightness, manipulate the image in many different ways. It can read and write many different kinds of graphic file types, including the ones used on the web, like PNG and JPG, to varied bitmap types, PDF and others. It also requires X11 to run.

View larger image of GIMP

Other Applications

Because of the UNIX underpinnings of OS X, you can run a multitude of open source applications on the Macintosh. Applications such as MySQL, games, graphics programs, even the desktop environments KDE and Gnome. Just about any software that is written for UNIX can work on a Macintosh, with some modifications. Darwin is quite similar to BSD, but it has a different kernel, and the file structure is somewhat different. In some cases, the modifications are quite minor. In others, major.

There are three ways to get the wide variety of open source applications that work on the command line, or X11, to work on a Macintosh. First, and least likely, is to get the source code, and compile it yourself, figuring out along the way what needs to be different. Luckily, there are two projects that have done the work for you.

Fink is a project that uses binary packages that are already compiled for the Macintosh, and uses a package management system that is derived from the Debian Linux distribution, called “apt”, which makes management of multiple packages easy to do. Once you install fink, installing any packages that have been ported by fink is as easy as “fink install package_name.”

MacPorts is another project which helps bring open source applications to the Macintosh. It used to be called “DarwinPorts.” Once MacPorts is installed, it is possible to download, compile and install a wide variety of UNIX software using one command. Like Fink, it will download and install any other required software.

In order for any of these to work, however, you must have Xcode Tools installed, as well as X11 (for any packages that require a GUI.) Xcode Tools includes compilers and other necessary development utilities.

Getting Help

Of course, the first thing to do is to look over the documentation that exists for an open source application you want to run. Unfortunately, in some cases, open source software doesn't have as user-friendly documentation as one would hope. However, most open source software packages, including all of the ones I have mentioned in this article, have rich user communities that can be very helpful for support. Some of these communities exist on e-mail lists, or in web-based forums, in other cases, there are IRC channels available where users and developers hang out, and it is possible to sometimes get almost instant help for a problem. You'll find links to any email or web discussions, and the information for IRC channels on the projects' websites.

Also, if you have a specific issue (with installation, or a particular feature isn't working as you expect) doing a Google search is very helpful, and may in fact lead to a solution quite quickly. Pasting the exact error message into Google often yields good results.

Conclusion

Because of its UNIX and open source underpinnings, Mac OS X is a great platform for using open source software. There are a number of projects that use the Mac's native user interface as I've described above. And then there is the large quantity of open source UNIX software available for use on the Mac. It takes a bit of time and experimentation to use the latter, but it is worth it, given the possibilities of using some very powerful software on the Mac.