After years of promising TextMate 2.0, it’s finally on it’s way in alpha form.
But that isn’t the most interesting part of the story.
TextMate is developed by MacroMates and they have announced that the code for TextMate 2.0 will be available via GitHub.
So what has caused such a drastic move?
“The code is being open sourced in order to counteract what some developers see as Apple’s increasingly limiting user and developer freedom on the Mac platform.”
MacroMates is using version 3 of the GNU General Public License, which will make the code available for all to download, while at the same time prevent “closed-source forks.”
Allan Odgaard wrote on the TextMate blog,
“This is partly to avoid a closed source fork and partly because the hacker in me wants all software to be free (as in speech), so in a time where our platform vendor is taking steps to limit our freedom, this is my small attempt of countering such trend.”
Are you a TextMate fan?
What do you think of MacroMates move?
Grab TextMate 2.0 from the GitHub.
[via ArsTechnica]
Paul Prins says
This is really cool. I’ve been doing all my dev in TextMate for the last 4 years and have loved it. It’s super light weight, and no fuss. Excited to see what they do with 2.0, and the open source move is very interesting in light of Apples increasing lock down they are imposing.
Eric Dye says
What kind of dev do you do, Paul?
Raoul Snyman says
Like Paul said, this is very cool to hear. However, I’m wondering what the net effect of this will be with Apple trying to lock even OS X down so that you can only install apps from the app store. I know (being an open source developer and all that) that the GPL is incompatible with the Apple app store license, so if he wants to get it in the app store, he’s going to have to change the license.
Raoul Snyman says
There’s a nice interview on Ars Technica[0] with Allan Odgaard about this.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/08/odgaard-i-will-continue-working-on-textmate-as-long-as-i-am-a-mac-user/
Eric Dye says
Great link, Raoul, thank you!!!
Eric Dye says
Apple is walking a fine line with the App Store. They should tread lightly, or they risk cutting off their deepest roots. #FACT