What Is Darwin?
Linked by David Adams on Tue 8th Apr 2008 16:33 UTC
BSD and Darwin derivatives "I am very happy about the direction in which the Mac OS X GUI is going, although sadly many Mac users aren't interested in (or don't know about) the "lower levels" of the Macintosh Operating System. Have you ever wondered why the Terminal greets you with the words "Welcome to Darwin"? Why do BSD and Mac OS share certain bits of code? Why does Wikipedia describe Mac OS X as a graphical operating system? Today we're going to take a look at the underlying open source technology which powers your fancy Leopard OS - the hidden core set of components, named Darwin."
E-mail Print r 6   62 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/f4e
Thread beginning with comment 308691
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
What BSD could have been
by Moulinneuf on Tue 8th Apr 2008 17:57 UTC
Moulinneuf
Member since:
2005-07-06

Darwin is a constant reminder of what BSD should and could have been had they put the effort , time , ressource and consideration in it that Apple did.

It show the failure of BSD as a protection clause and that it also show that Open Source alone don't work.

Its anti-commercial as only one entity profit from it and do control it.

Reply Score: -2

RE: What BSD could have been
by ari-free on Tue 8th Apr 2008 18:57 in reply to "What BSD could have been"
ari-free Member since:
2007-01-22

the real problem for bsd is that while they tried to be a good server, they didn't really care that it would be a good fit for the desktop. The linux people wanted both and that is why it took off. "I can play with it at home and hey I can use it as a server." The more linux was used as a desktop, the more drivers and developers for it and that turned it into a better server OS as well.

Reply Parent Score: 5

krreagan Member since:
2008-04-08

I use BSD on both the desktop (PC-BSD) and server (FBSD) and like it much better then the Linux in either service, as I have to do at work. FBSD is cleaner, easier to administer/upgrade, 7.0 is faster, more scalable. The ports are the best system I have seen for managing SW installs...

The cluster f*&k that is the Linux development method has creadted the worst code base that I have ever seen!

TEHO I guess.

TBM

Reply Parent Score: 1

Read more of this thread... >
orestes Member since:
2005-07-06

I'd say it was more a combination of timing (hello AT&T lawsuits), licensing choice, and culture that led to Linux taking off

Reply Parent Score: 3

Read more of this thread... >
RE: What BSD could have been
by krreagan on Tue 8th Apr 2008 19:06 in reply to "What BSD could have been"
krreagan Member since:
2008-04-08

Darwin is a constant reminder of what BSD should and could have been had they put the effort , time , ressource and consideration in it that Apple did.

It show the failure of BSD as a protection clause and that it also show that Open Source alone don't work.

Its anti-commercial as only one entity profit from it and do control it.

Could have been??? more users use BSD (Darwin, FBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD...) on their desktop than any other open source OS.

The BSD's are great operating systems, stable, fast and very useful.

BSD protection clause???????? The BSD license is truly an open license. The BSD license is IMO the best OOL out there.

Anti-commercial??? again I think your views are AFU. Apple is a very commercial entity. The BSD is more commercial friendly then GPLx. They both have their place but I'll stick to BSD licenses.

TBM

Edited 2008-04-08 19:18 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 9

ari-free Member since:
2007-01-22

I think he's saying that the noncommercially produced freebsd, netbsd and openbsd combined are not as successful as the noncommercial but GPL linux or the commercially produced macosx.

Now firefox has proven to be quite successful. Firefox in turn has increased demand for non GPL (or at least, only LGPL) code such as cairo graphics. When looking for a new memory allocator for firefox 3, they couldn't consider Hoard (www.hoard.org) since it was GPL.

Reply Parent Score: 1

Moulinneuf Member since:
2005-07-06

Could have been??? more users use BSD (Darwin, FBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD...) on their desktop than any other open source OS.


1) Darwin is not real Open Source or real Free Software. (1) It's not under BSD either (2)
2) Gnu/Linux as far more user's. (3)

A) Apple as 24 million user's , FBSD , NetBSD,OpenBSD don't have 200 000 user's put togheter.

The BSD's are great operating systems, stable, fast and very useful.


That's why Zero server OEM ship it , that's why zero Desktop OEM ship it.


BSD protection clause???????? The BSD license is truly an open license. The BSD license is IMO the best OOL out there.


License give permission , the BSD protection clause give no permission at all.

" Anti-commercial??? again I think your views are AFU."


Only Apple sale and control it.

" Apple is a very commercial entity."


Yes , but I was talking about BSD. Apple is not BSD , BSD based yes , but not BSD licensed.

" The BSD is more commercial friendly then GPLx."


Even Apple is not BSD , so who is left that make a BSD commercial contender that rival and beat only Red hat? NO ONE , Against Novell ? No ONE , etc ...

" They both have their place but I'll stick to BSD licenses.
"

No , otherwise there would be a billion dollar BSD company , and Darwin is not under BSD ...

-----

(1) I know that the OSI and FSF certify them as such.

But on record the OSI and FSF have problem explaining how it's impossible to find the last source , share the source , copy it for personnal use legally and make a copy to a friend or make a derivative to share or sale to other's.

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

License Apple Public Source License

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_systems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

Edited 2008-04-08 19:59 UTC

Reply Parent Score: -1

Read more of this thread... >
segedunum Member since:
2005-07-06

Could have been??? more users use BSD (Darwin, FBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD...) on their desktop than any other open source OS.

I've always chuckled at the way many BSD advocates try and portray the disadvantage of the BSD license in producing code and software that is used to provide others like Apple with a free ride to produce totally different and incompatible systems. "Oh well" the BSD people say. "It makes us the most used desktop system around!"

Keep thinking the above if it gives you some pleasure, and some comfort.

Reply Parent Score: 4

Read more of this thread... >
RE: What BSD could have been
by TechniCookie on Tue 8th Apr 2008 19:14 in reply to "What BSD could have been"
TechniCookie Member since:
2005-11-09

Chuckle ... What are your criteria for failure and success. They are obviously not the same as the BSD developers. Actually, they would reach the exact opposite of your conclusions.

The BSD are not catering the desktop crowd. Their aim is to be excellent servers, and they most certainly are. That is success, it is as simple as that.

They do not have a crisis in regards to developers or user base.

That companies are using BSD code is not a failure. It is actually something the developers want.

Reply Parent Score: 4

Doc Pain Member since:
2006-10-08

Wow, prejudices and unfounded assumptions are fun! :-)

Chuckle ... What are your criteria for failure and success. They are obviously not the same as the BSD developers. Actually, they would reach the exact opposite of your conclusions.


It's just where you set your priorities. In terms of making money, maybe. In terms of serving their users well - that would be my priority - the BSDs are really successful; it's worth mentioning that almost every OS is intended to a special audience, and definitely, the audiences of the BSDs and the audiences of other OSes aren't much the same.

The BSD are not catering the desktop crowd. Their aim is to be excellent servers, and they most certainly are. That is success, it is as simple as that.


To ... erm, cater ... :-) the desktop crowd, there are systems that are based upon BSDs, intending to make the BSD easier to newbies, but without breaking compatibility to the underlying OS. Examples are PC-BSD and DesktopBSD, both based upon FreeBSD, with different grades of compatibility.

That companies are using BSD code is not a failure. It is actually something the developers want.


That's true. The BSDL has often been criticized to be a kind of "rape me license" because it allows things that the GPL or commercial licenses don't. That's nothing bad per se, and, as you mentioned, this is well intended.

I'd like to add that I'm using BSD for server and desktop purposes (productivity, programming, multimedia, video, audio, gaming etc.) nearly exclusively (along with a bit of Solaris and IRIX) for many years now, and I do feel that the BSDs are what they wanted to be - no "what they could have been" - because if they would be something highly different, I'm not sure if I would use them under these circumstances, for example, if the kind of how documentation is done would change into the way that's sadly to be seen with Linux (you can easily imagine other examples where BSD is most successful). Furthermore, since I got my defective iBook working, I develop into a fan of Mac OS X. :-)

Reply Parent Score: 4

Read more of this thread... >
RE: What BSD could have been
by anomie on Tue 8th Apr 2008 21:07 in reply to "What BSD could have been"
anomie Member since:
2007-02-26

It show the failure of BSD as a protection clause and that it also show that Open Source alone don't work.


The license permits what has been done with Darwin. How is this a failure? If BSD devs wanted only to be materially wealthy, they would not be generously donating their time in the manner they do. (The same more or less applies to many - not all - FOSS projects.)

Reply Parent Score: 4

RE: What BSD could have been
by Chezz on Tue 8th Apr 2008 21:30 in reply to "What BSD could have been"
Chezz Member since:
2005-07-11

Or may be it just shows how successful BSD is thats why they chose it in the 1st place.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE: What BSD could have been
by telengard on Wed 9th Apr 2008 01:03 in reply to "What BSD could have been"
telengard Member since:
2008-04-09

Darwin is a constant reminder of what BSD should and could have been had they put the effort , time , ressource and consideration in it that Apple did.

It show the failure of BSD as a protection clause and that it also show that Open Source alone don't work.

Its anti-commercial as only one entity profit from it and do control it.


After my jaw dropped from reading this I decided to register here so I could ask...

Are you serious??

Darwin is a complete franken-os compared to something like FreeBSD. FreeBSD is well thought out and has sane code. Check out the xnu and darwin tree some time. It's a mess.

I'd like to hear exactly what Darwin is that FreeBSD could have been.

~telengard

Reply Parent Score: 2