Tech Roundup: Curl vs Apple, Docker Fees, Windows 11 Blue Screen, Octoverse, OpenSearch

Curl founder challenges Apple’s use of open‑source tools

On November 18, Daniel Stenberg, the creator and lead developer of curl, published a blog criticizing Apple for bundling open‑source components like curl into its products, profiting billions without contributing sponsorship, and shifting support responsibilities to the open‑source community.

The dispute began after a user, @Michael Rieder, reported an issue with the macOS‑bundled curl manual on Twitter; Apple responded by directing the user to curl’s website instead of providing direct assistance.

Stenberg expressed frustration at being treated as a free support resource, noting similar past incidents where Apple redirected refund requests to app developers.

curl is an open‑source project offering the command‑line tool curl and the libcurl C library for network transfers based on URLs, released in 1997 and licensed under the MIT license.

Docker introduces paid subscriptions

In September, Docker Desktop announced a subscription model requiring companies with over 250 employees or annual revenue exceeding $10 million to pay for Docker Business. To simplify adoption, Docker now allows credit‑card purchases for as few as five seats and provides guidance for selecting appropriate subscription plans.

Windows 11 restores the classic blue crash screen

Microsoft released Windows 11 Build 22000.346, which reverts the “dead screen” from black back to the traditional blue screen of death. The blue screen has a long history dating back to Windows 1.0 in 1985, with various color variations introduced in later versions.

GitHub Octoverse 2021 highlights

The Octoverse report shows 73 million developers on GitHub, with 16 million new users this year. China now hosts 7.5 million developers, the second‑largest community globally. JavaScript remains the most popular language, while Python surged to the third spot, overtaking C, which fell to ninth behind Shell.

Developers increasingly favor hybrid and remote work arrangements.

OpenSearch: a new cloud‑native search option?

Elastic, founded in 2012, popularized Elasticsearch. As cloud providers adopt SaaS models, many offer managed Elasticsearch services, but licensing changes have left some without upgrade paths, prompting interest in OpenSearch as an open‑source, cloud‑native alternative.