But Mac OS X is only at the beginning. Apple has successfully delivered Unix, the most powerful operating system in the world, to the desktop in a form most anyone can use. When you use it, you can feel the wellspring of power just waiting to be tapped. Well, beyond inheriting an OS foundation that has been pounded on for decades by the most demanding people ever to torment a computer, we also benefit from all the knowledge about that foundation and the software written for it. And, we get to take advantage of the massive open-source community for Unix.
Open source is a remarkable concept.
It means that every line of code powering the software is open to everyone. People all over the world can collaborate to improve that software, to expose bugs that might otherwise remain hidden and unfixed for years, and to re-use bits of software in ways that the authors might never have imagined. A great example of the potential results is Fire, a universal chat application that uses open-source components to build an application that itself is not open source. Had Epicware been forced to write the code to interact with each chat system, Fire might never have been compiled. The Mac, traditionally the most closed of closed environments, is suddenly wide open, thanks to Mac OS X's Unix foundation.