Apple announced today that it is open sourcing its Rendezvous networking technology. The company hopes that by releasing the source code to the open source community, it will hasten support for the technology.
Rendezvous enables users to create an instant network of computers without having to assign individual addresses or use additional servers or other technology. Supported in Mac OS X 10.2, the technology will ultimately work with printers and other networkable devices too. Rendezvous itself is based on an existing open source specification called ZeroConf, and utilizes standard protocols like IP, ARP and DNS. Third-party developers are catching on — Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark, Philips, Sybase, World book and Xerox have all announced support for Rendezvous in future products.
“By supporting an open standards process and providing open source software that is available today, Apple is encouraging the rapid adoption of Rendezvous technology,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.
Developers can as open source under the Apple Public Source License; it’s part of a larger open source release from Apple that includes Darwin 6.0.1 and new Open Directory plug-ins.
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