The introduction of Tiger by Apple at its Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco this past week offers some telling facts that the open source community is making an impact commercially.
I was briefed by Apple on the client and server versions of the new release of OS X, slated for early 2005, and several features have been driven largely by their open source participation. As most know, the entire Apple kernel for OS X is available via open source as Darwin, and even has an Intel PC port.
Most significant may be the release of Rendezvous for Java, Linux/Unix and Windows. This is a zero-configuration tool for networking that includes network protocols, identification and configuration of devices and services such as printers and local/remote servers, and was based off of open source technology.
Link: Sitepoint
