Apple Crippled Its DTrace Port 476
Linnen writes in to note that one of developers of Sun's open source system tracing tool, DTrace, has discovered that Apple crippled its port of the tool so that software like iTunes could not be traced. From Adam Leventhal's blog: "I let it run for a while, made iTunes do some work, and the result when I stopped the script? Nothing. The expensive DTrace invocation clearly caused iTunes to do a lot more work, but DTrace was giving me no output. Which started me thinking... did they? Surely not. They wouldn't disable DTrace for certain applications. But that's exactly what Apple's done with their DTrace implementation. The notion of true systemic tracing was a bit too egalitarian for their classist sensibilities..."
And as quick as it is reported (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:And as quick as it is reported (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And as quick as it is reported (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And as quick as it is reported (Score:5, Funny)
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In terms of a "modern" UNIX, a Linux distribution is more "UNIX" than OSX. The filesystem layout is more standard UNIX, the graphical environment is more UNIX, etc etc etc without using add-ons like a non-native X server running on top of Aqua, and the list goes on..
MacOS is a decent system in of itself, but to say it's more UNIX than a Linux distribution is laughable. I mean, c'mon. Get over it. Next you'll say MacOS washes a car better than a sponge..
Re:And as quick as it is reported (Score:5, Funny)
. . . . . . . . You
Re:And as quick as it is reported (Score:5, Funny)
Going by namechecks on Slashdot, three. Ubuntu, Fedora, and Gentoo. But I don't think anyone's ever finished installing Gentoo.
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Thanks Community, now fix Quicktime 7.4 (Score:5, Informative)
http://blogs.adobe.com/keyframes/2008/01/dont_update_to_quicktime_74.html [adobe.com]
Re:Thanks Community, now fix Quicktime 7.4 (Score:4, Insightful)
I get the point now. You are making a logical leap that since the community can "fix" something that the sources are freely available for, then they should be responsible for "fixing" everything that Apple may cripple in some way even though all of the sources to things you want fixed are proprietary. Whether or not that is even remotely possible (which you, in fact, state in your reply that it is not), you were able to vent semi-topical frustration with Apple's breaking popular applications. Even got modded "informative" for it somehow. Good for you. When you have the sources for Quicktime, let the community know and someone may fix it for you.
Also, the point that Apple essentially crippled something that was futile to cripple (remember the sources?) may have eluded you.
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the day, week, or even month that they are released, unless it fixes
a problem that you are experiencing. The quicktime 7.4 update has little
to offer to someone in a production environment.
Over the years, this has been proved time and time again.
I have a graphics studio that is still on 10.4.6, and they are
very happy with it. The studio manager won't let me do mass updates
unless we try it on one machine first, and feel comfortable that
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To use a famous bit of cricket sledging... "I don't know, ask your wife"
DRM? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though the labels have largely dropped DRM, they still don't like the idea of users having control over digital music. It's part of their DNA. Their whole business revolved around having control over the production and distribution systems, and they just can't contemplate existence without having control over something. The contracts between Apple and the labels reflect that fear, with Apple having the job of making it look like the horses are still in the barn even though the door is open.
Now technically, that's impossible. But my experience with corporate software development has shown me that you can balance 'customers who don't want to know what's impossible' with judicious use of handwavium. You don't have to build a solution that's bulletproof, you just need something that works most of the time. It doesn't matter if there are workarounds, or even if those workarounds are practically trivial for anyone with a technical background, as long as you can't discuss the workaround without using technical terms.
It's sort of an extension of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It's not that your customers can't think about the problem if you lack the vocabulary, it's more that they won't want to think about the problem if they have to spend effort learning how to discuss it intelligently.
So from a contractual standpoint, providing a 'credible effort' is more about obfuscation than actually trying to do the impossible. Apple probably doesn't care if people can work around this issue, as long as the explanation boils down to 'blah blah blah' to aggressively uninformed label executives.
Operating System Tying (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course.
The interesting issue is that nobody can compete with Apple on, say, a music store effectively.
When they add a new iTunes feature, they can change Quicktime to support it or they can disable DTrace so people can't easily reverse it. Nobody else can do that. They're probably not going to get into a DOJ tiff over it, though - Bush [the _ administration] isn't likely to get into it, and Al Gore is on their board.
And so it's probably not surprising tha
Re:Operating System Tying (Score:4, Insightful)
*sigh*
There are plenty of alternative sources for digital music, almost all of which will play on an iPod and be indexed by iTunes. The ones that don't are formats the market isn't beating down Apple's door to support (Ogg), or which require licensing fees (WMA). All the MP3s you've bought from Amazon play on an iPod. All the tracks you import from a CD will play on an iPod. The iTunes store is a convenience for iPod owners, not a necessity.
Besides, the standard operational definition of a monopoly is that a company can raise prices without losing sales, because consumers don't have credible alternatives. So far, Apple's behavior with regard to pricing is to fight against price increases.
There are credible alternatives to the iPod for people who want a digital music player. There are credible alternatives to the iTunes store for people who want to buy digital music. There are credible ways to get music without a digital music player. Apple has the leading products in the digital music player market, and is one of the leading outlets for digital music, but there is a big-ass difference between being a market leader and being a monopolist engaging in anticompetitive behavior, and the DOJ's attitude toward market leaders in competitive markets is "don't bother me, I have real work to do."
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Headline: Slashbot learns from masters... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I mind, but suddenly I feel at least 50% less efficient.
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, I understand that Apple cares about their DRM. Fine and dandy, good for them -- but it'd be nice if they could protect it in a way that didn't break DTrace scripts that have nothing to do with trying to hack the DRM in iTunes.
"DTrace is hardly crippled" (Score:5, Insightful)
I call BULLSHIT.
If they're selectively telling this app NOT to log "certain types of traffic", and give no notification of such, or allow the functionality to be restored, then it's CRIPPLED.
I'm so sick of apologists telling me that stuff that's broken is broken for a good reason and that I should be glad someone deigned to allow me to hack it back to some semblance of functionality without getting sued into oblivion!
Alarmist my backside. (Score:3, Insightful)
Doing so is simply the first step on the slippery slope to disabling it for other things.
If you want to pay someone for the privilege of computing on a system that's essentially a black box, more power to you.
Other people don't.
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That's the optimistic view.... the cynical prediction is that they will give up and remove dTrace support from the release builds of the OS.
DRM bad, but "classist sensibilities"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM bad, but "classist sensibilities"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. Because that's how the OS community is (Score:5, Insightful)
We never ever criticize our heroes ever. [infoworld.com]
The difference you seem to be missing here is that Steve Jobs only occasionally does a boneheaded thing like this against his fan base. Bill Gates only occasionally doesn't.
Not equivalent, no double standard (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody and nothing is perfect, this does NOT mean that everything imperfect, is equivalent.
Do you divorce your wife for making occasional mistakes? No, only if she is habitually and frequently bad. Are you more forgiving of a son who just occasionally screws up lightly, as opposed to one who does drugs and steals from you and ends up in jail regularly? Of course. Is every political leader who has lied at least once, just as bad as Hitler? Is somebody who beats his wife every day equally bad to somebody who once slapped his wife over 50 years of marriage?
Please, stop with this pretending that all things are equivalent. There is NO double-standard here.
Re:Not equivalent, no double standard (Score:4, Informative)
But Jobs is chronically evil.
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A battle is not the war, but it is part of it.
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The struggle between "good" entities and "evil" ones is a mythical recasting of the everyday struggle between good and evil elements of every person. People are impure, institutions are impure. Corporations are a valuable kind of inst
Re:DRM bad, but "classist sensibilities"? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you are saying is that the smaller organization we may voluntarily join (e.g. the corporations that employ us) should be policed by and subject to the larger organizations that we are a member of whether we like it or not (e.g. the country in which we are born).
Yeah, well, not by me. I prefer to choose with whom I associate, and to whom I listen. I most definitely do not like the idea of the largest possible organization of which I'm a member, like it or not, enforcing the ultimate rules of my life. I'm much happier if the rules are defined by a smaller organization that I voluntarily join, and which I can voluntarily leave if I don't like the rules.
In a free society, where the largest powerful organizations are much smaller than the entire country, I can find the corner of it that plays by the rules I like. I have choices. I can be mostly who I want to be. In your "social" society, I have no more choices. I have to be what the majority thinks I should be, act accordingly to their morality and expectations.
No thanks! I know my average fellow man too well to think it would be fun to allow him to dictate the terms of my life.
Re:DRM bad, but "classist sensibilities"? (Score:4, Insightful)
The struggle against corporations may be an important part of the defense of humanity, but some would argue that seemingly innocuous things are often just small, innocuous things, and that to go ape shit about them and blow them out of proportion is characteristic of small minds and spirits.
Some would also argue that getting hung up on the small things and seeing battles to be won therein is a good way to ensure that people never take on any large and not so seemingly innocuous issues, that they self indulgently imagine themselves to be revolutionaries fighting the good fight and propagating righteous and enlightened rhetoric.
And even if these people are totally wrong, it still doesn't excuse the ideologically loaded "classist sensibilities" bullshit. But I'm sure the original poser, err poster, feels good about his awesomeness.
gcc -ideo ramshackle world.cpp (Score:5, Funny)
This is Slashdot where "paper or plastic" is an epic struggle directly and immediately affecting the fates of billions!
BILLIONS, I tell you! BILLIONS!
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It BREAKS dtrace.
If iTunes happens to be the process interrupted to run the dtrace probe, that flag being set prevents the probe from running.
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"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
Re:DRM bad, but "classist sensibilities"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Apple's just being a company" = "Class struggle"
The fact that there are two classes of legally recognized entities, with competing rights allocated to each, is sort of the definition of a class struggle.
it's a slippery slope to genocide, folks (Score:5, Funny)
Then, they came for gettytab, but I did not speak out, because I was happy with Apple's default terminal configuration.
Then, they came for snort, but I was not worried about intrusion detection so I did not speak up.
Next, they came for mkdep, but I did not speak out, because the maid does all my compiling.
Sadly, when it came time for them to use killall, there was nobody left to speak up for me!
Re:DRM bad, but "classist sensibilities"? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the frickin' **author** of DTrace has found the specific code used by Apple to cripple it.
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BSD licence: "Sharing is not stealing".
GPL2 = "Not sharing is stealing".
GPL3 = "Not sharing is definitely stealing, but just simply sharing is not necessarily not stealing either".
The BSD licence interpreted literally can permit distribution of binaries without Source Code. The BSD people work their backsides off to ensure that nobody does this. The GNU people decided to write their own licence explicitly forbidding it. There is no other word for this except laziness.
Yet another example of how Apple is not our friend (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, Apple is *my* friend! :-P (Score:2, Informative)
When Apple begins sending out legions of hunter-killer robots to take down open source projects and assassinate their maintainers, then you might have a point, Mr. Zombie, sir.
OS-X itself (Score:4, Interesting)
You can argue till your blue in the face that they need to do this, doesn't change what they are doing. If it wasn't DRM'd, it'd run fine on any hardware that met its technical requirements.
Re:OS-X itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, it's not too hard to get around this (install Darwin), but there actually is something "technical that prevents it from running on any modern PC".
Re:OS-X itself (Score:4, Insightful)
Well sort of, but it is also licensed to only run on Apple hardware, so unless you're planning on breaking the license you don't have a problem. DRM on media attempts to apply licensing to content, which is a slightly different matter. As a Linux supporter I object to users modifying Linux and redistributing it without the source as that violates the license. I don't see why Apple should not only object but take measures to prevent people from violating their license. (Especially given that they are in a bad place economically as their crown jewels is a desktop OS and the desktop OS market is monopolized, which means if they can't bundle their OS with a complete system, there is no long-term way to stay in business unless the courts act effectively against MS... and we all know our court system is way too corrupt for that.)
Look I admit it would be nice if Apple unbundled their OS and hardware, but I'm also smart enough to know that would quickly lead to Apple having to stop developing their OS altogether. I'm also smart enough to see how much collateral damage that would do to open standards and Linux as it would change the market from, 8% OS X and 1% Linux and 80% Windows to 98% Windows in a hurry. MS doesn't need more power to break the market and that is exactly what we'd have if Apple dropped their hardware and OS bundling as a license requirement.
Re:Yet another example of how Apple is not our fri (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm by no means a fan boy, I own a Mac Pro and I run Leopard. They're just tools and even with Apple's flaws I'll still with them until something better appears.
Right now I'd sooner eat a slightly damaged apple th
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Now it's more about "Thankfully a hack is already out. Move along folks, it was just another DRM decision by Apple."
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Remember, tha
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DMCA (Score:2, Redundant)
Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
This will be a big help for me in my quest for a legion of Mac zombies
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
It might be easier to just attend a Macworld conference.
Luckily... (Score:5, Interesting)
* If the thread on which this probe has fired belongs to a process marked P_LNOATTACH
* then this enabling is not permitted to observe it. Move along, nothing to see here.
*/
Luckily no malicious programmer will mark their malware's process with this flag!
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* If the thread on which this probe has fired belongs to a process marked P_LNOATTACH
* then this enabling is not permitted to observe it. Move along, nothing to see here.
*/
Luckily no malicious programmer will mark their malware's process with this flag!
Evil bit (Score:5, Funny)
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* If the thread on which this probe has fired belongs to a process marked P_LNOATTACH
* then this enabling is not permitted to observe it. Move along, nothing to see here.
*/
So... written by a slashdot reader? Don't know of many other places that displays that message on a regular basis.
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Google says Results 1 - 10 of about 21,900 for "move along, nothing to see here" -slashdot. That makes it 70,000 hits mentioning slashdot, 22000 that don't.
Re:Luckily... (Score:5, Insightful)
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This course will cause Apple to loose what they have gained in the last 5 years.
Freedom Crippled when you use Proprietary Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Eagles have nothing to do with this (Score:5, Funny)
Classist Apple? Anti-egaliitarian IBM tolls? (Score:5, Funny)
it's kdawson day (Score:3, Interesting)
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From the Fine Article (Score:4, Insightful)
"So Apple is explicitly preventing DTrace from examining or recording data for processes which don't permit tracing. This is antithetical to the notion of systemic tracing, antithetical to the goals of DTrace, and antithetical to the spirit of open source."
Diagnostic tool that won't look at all processes is no tool at all.
Slashdot Headline Accuracy? (Score:5, Funny)
Nice...
It's worse, they have broken DTrace (Score:5, Informative)
One question: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:One question: (Score:5, Informative)
For now, yes... But apple has been in the process of creating cryptographically secure signing and verification of system applications. The next step for them will be to have system tools like this be executed ONLY if they are the unmodified, signed applications that apple originally released.
When that happens, it wouldn't matter if you recompile dtrace - your modified version would just not run.
for info on the current code signing specification from apple (which is pretty much benign for now), see:
--jeffk++
Re:One question: (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Its main market is for an easy to use home computer and as a creative platform for video editing, graphic design and professional audio.
If you want a command line you're fully in control of, use Linux or a BSD Unix.
It's a commercial OS and Apple will do what they like so long as its legal.
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but no, they don't flaunt the cli to most people.... (at least not in marketing rags or anything I've seen..)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
You obviously didn't look very hard. [apple.com]
And software development. Or where did you think the developers of those video editors work and test their code?
No disagreement there, but it doesn't hurt to remind people that OS X is not that. People often leave Linux for OS X, claiming that it's basically an easier-to-use Linux than Linux, you still have all your stuff, etc. And you can always ssh to a Linux server to do real work.
Why is this OK?
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Take a look at the way they go after the science market (http://www.apple.com/science/ [apple.com]).
Apple market OS X as a UNIX system and have done for a long time. They're just smart enough only to market it as a UNIX system to the markets that appreciate UNIX.
The point of the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it's annoying that DTrace can't "see" iTunes. But that's more of a DRM issue. Whether you agree with DRM and Apple's implementation of it or not, this DTrace feature is merely a logical extension of that issue.
The real problem though is that this feature actually does break iTunes. If DTrace probes while the iTunes application happens to be the application currently running on the CPU, the DTrace probe won't run. (It's technically a thread of iTunes' at that moment.) So not only will DTrace not show iTunes, it won't show ANY information until it happens to fire off when iTunes isn't the app running on the CPU.
It is fair to say that Apple has made a change to DTrace that has introduced a bug that they need to fix. It is possible for them to fix that bug while continuing to block using DTrace on iTunes.
Re:The point of the article (Score:5, Informative)
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In what situation is this a problem if you are not probing iTunes? If you're trying to get info from another program, iTunes won't be the application currently runing on the CPU when the event happens.
Stupid question. (Score:2)
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully there are options which involve neither company.
One step back (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it's annoying - every time we examine the system we are now looking at everything except for iTunes (and possibly Spy-WaR3 ;-). But this issue is about more than just that.
I've introduced DTrace to many companies. While most people love it, some developers of closed source software are concerned about people DTracing their code. DTrace allows customers to gather proof of bugs that are embarrassing, hard to fix, or that the developers have deny existed. I've been asked many times if DTrace can be disabled for an application, usually to avoid negative publicity from the bugs that DTrace will expose. The answer has always been no. It's been great to see developers accept this reality and escelate bug fixing.
This is expected - DTrace visibility should improve overall code quality in IT. Hopefully it will also encourage employers to hire better programmers - since if customers don't use DTrace to point out embarassing bugs, then competitors may. It also erodes reasons to stay closed source - customers can use DTrace to see the code anyway.
Giving developers another option, to disable DTrace visibility, is allowing a backwards step from the future.
What a tragedy (Score:5, Funny)
It will be tricky to make the Windows port twice as horrible though. Maybe I can get it to punch the user in the face every ten minutes?
Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Leopard's DTrace isn't broken. Apple put in an API for a program to request that debugging & dtrace be disabled for it. Clearly it's there to keep FairPlay from being broken (too easily). Something that commercial developers could understandably want for their software, to prevent keygen hacks, etc.
The link I provide shows a simple way to get around it. Hell, debugging iTunes is directly encouraged in an Apple Technote (linked in the article).
As listed in the article I linked to, you can get around it by trapping the API call in gdb and disabling it.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Leopard's DTrace is broken, and that was the point of the blog post. Here's the issue: DTrace programs that would normally work and collect valid data will fail if a process is running with Apple's trace-me-not bit set. Forget tracing iTunes or other applications that don't want to be traced. It's that probes that should fire don't as an unintended side-effect of Apple's hack to obscure certain applications.
A much smarter approach would have been for Apple to deny visibility into such a process, but still allow a user to monitor system-level events (e.g. timers and system calls). This would have allowed for the (questionably motivated, and highly circumventable) protection while not damaging DTrace and correctly phrased queries.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
DTrace works on processes it's supposed to, and doesn't work on those it's not. I'm happy to agree the implementation of the latter is buggy, but I don't think it's the end of the world or a conspiracy theory. Maybe later the providers can be adapted to more intelligently deal with these closed-off processes to give more consistent results.
Apple decided to put in some measures to keep some software locked-down. The correctness of doing so isn't a technical issue, that's a philosophical one.
DTrace is a wonderful tool: one that's saved me *months* off my PhD work, and I love it. And you have my deepest respect for it. But, I don't take dtrace as a philosophy -- I gave up on software religion a long time ago. Everyone's got their own requirements (e.g. locking down iTunes to keep FairPlay from being cracked -- to keep record producers from leaving iTunes) and they've gotta get them done however they can. Call it mercenary ethics if you want, but we don't all work at Sun with CEOs who get it.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Leopard's DTrace isn't broken. Apple put in an API for a program to request that debugging & dtrace be disabled for it. Clearly it's there to keep FairPlay from being broken (too easily). Something that commercial developers could understandably want for their software, to prevent keygen hacks, etc.
The link I provide shows a simple way to get around it. Hell, debugging iTunes is directly encouraged in an Apple Technote (linked in the article).
As listed in the article I linked to, you can get around it by trapping the API call in gdb and disabling it.
DTrace is a system level tool that should work properly on any and every process and thread in the system without smoke and mirrors.
Leopard's DTrace is broken. It does not do what it should.
There's no hating or drama about it. I don't care why they did it, and you're probably right that DRM is the reason. That doesn't mean it's not fubar'd.
Everyone needs to use this now (Score:3, Informative)
Every developer reading this who cares about DTrace and wants to be able to use it for system-wide metrics should set the P_LNOATTACH flag in the next point release for their app. Apple won't like it, but if enough developers do it as a form of protest, it would effectively make DTrace/Instruments ineffective, eliminating a bullet-point feature from Leopard.
DTRACE (Score:5, Informative)
Old is New Again (Score:5, Informative)
Back in 2000, if you installed MacsBug on a Mac you couldn't play DVDs. When you opened the DVD Player you got an error message telling you a debugger was installed. In these pre-memory protection days, MacsBug was the only debugger low-level enough to catch a whole mess of problems. Unfortunately, MacsBug was loaded when the system booted, so the only way to play a DVD was to remove MacsBug and restart your machine.
Long time Mac developer ally Bare Bones Software (they have a great text editor) created a patch that "fixed" this limitation. AFAIK, Apple never said anything about their patch and just quietly let it exist. http://www.macobserver.com/news/00/april/000418/dvdplayerhelper.shtml [macobserver.com]
This whole message mess came about because Macrovision didn't want people disabling their protection on video-output (there were Macs you could literally plug into VCRs then), and I suspect it was also to guard the CSS "encryption."
When Blu-ray movies finally show up in Macs, this kind of thing is probably going to get a lot worse than patches to D-Trace.
Re:C'mon, seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real effects seem to be that while a process which sets this flag has control of the system, any DTrace events that fire off during this time will not be detected, as if they never occurred, regardless of whether what is being traced has anything to do with that process. It seems to break a few important(?) idioms used by DTrace users, so that the results returned are not what they should be.
The furor seems to be that this subtle breakage has gone undocumented; and although only iTunes currently uses it, that does not stop other software (including software that should not be there) from using it. That a DTrace developer discovered this, combined with that this is in all likelihood being done for no reason other than that of DRM, is what makes this notable. If I were working on DTrace, I'd probably be pissed too.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple's record with open source is inconsistent. Sometimes they develop internally and release source (Darwin, Bonjour), sometimes they collaborate with open source projects and share (WebKit with KDE), sometimes they buy out someone's software (Cover Flow), sometimes they steal ideas and never credit original authors (Dashboard).
Apple has its own open source license, the Apple Public Source License, approved by OSI and the FSF. However, they also release under the Apache license as well.
I would say in general, Apple is very open source-friendly, and a lot of open source developers I know have flocked to the Mac. It's just sometimes they have some evil empire corporation actions that make us Apple users shake our heads.
Diplomacy much? (Score:3, Insightful)