Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 26th Dec 2008 11:58 UTC, submitted by probono
Most of you will know that the underlying core set of components of Mac OS X and the iPhone operating system are released under the Apple Public Source License, an FSF-approved open source license. Few of you, however, will have actually used Darwin in any other form than Mac OS X or the iPhone OS. Despite numerous projects attempting so, Darwin has never gained any significant traction apart from Apple's own interest. The PureDarwin project tries to rise from the ashes of the OpenDarwin project, and has just released a Christmas developer preview.
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Member since:2008-11-22
Member since:2005-11-21
GNUStep is a free implementation of Cocoa, and if a programmer develops on GNUStep, porting to Cocoa should be trouble-free, but not the other way around.
The only portions that need to be written from scratch are possibly Quartz, QuickTime and Core APIs.
The only portions that need to be written from scratch are possibly Quartz, QuickTime and Core APIs.
Incorrect.
GNUstep is a set of frameworks based upon the Openstep API standard and has slowly tried to incorporate as much of the current Cocoa frameworks it can, in order to have your code viable on both platforms.
Unfortunately, due to aversion by 99.9% of the FOSS community towards ObjC it's been struggling to mature.
The Etoile Project is interesting, if you want a merging of GNUstep and Smalltalk, in a piece meal approach that isn't going to set any performance records for Desktop Environments.
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Member since:
2005-11-11
Cloning an OS such as it remains compatible at the ABI is very difficult, and demanding. Not very exciting for open source developers, for sure. Such a task only makes sense for windows, given its huge user base and applications.
Mac OS X, from an OS POV, has nothing much to offer compared to linux or bsd or other unices. Its internals or architecture are not interesting compared to the other open source alternatives: the interesting bits of Mac OS X are the proprietary ones: quartz, cocoa, the applications, maybe the development tools (instruments and the likes). There is a reason why Apple, given its history of secrecy, has given away the kernel: it is useless for anyone but Apple.
What would something like open darwin have to offer that bsd or linux cannot ?