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:
2008-04-30
Well, I was actually talking about advantages and so far I have seen none.
I do have knowledge in the underpinnings of different models of kernel development, Thom, and it's not because of laziness that I asked.
hybrid kernel, monolithic kernel, microkernel... those are just words, differences and advantages are seen on implementation and I would really like to see one from Darwin... I'm not being sarcastic or anything, I really want to know what does Darwin has to offer, that others can't... since I haven't found anything so far.
What makes Mac OS X unique is everything that is not on Darwin (you know... Cocoa, Quartz, Aqua, the different "cores"..)... After all, Darwin is the (somewhat) evolution of the Mach + BSD + FreeBSD + NetBSD + stuff from OpenSolaris + some things from Apple (HFS+ support...) mix that both nextstep and apple used and have been using on their OSs... but what can anyone other than Apple do with this kind of FrankenOS? (note that those things they base Darwin off are mostly open source already)
Sorry, but while I always have seen the Darwin kernel as "interesting" I have also always seen it as a lame excuse of an open source project from Apple... there was a reason why OpenDarwin failed and without an advantage for using pureDarwin, I see the same thing repeating again...