“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.”
Not only is the explanation horrid, but the lineage is all out of whack.
Does any OSnews-reader not know what’s Darwin?
I don’t think so… because we’re not a gamer site.
i would say that most non-geeks just dont care…
for them the desktop that greets them when they turn on the machine is osx.
and in a way it is. that and the underlying ui libs and some extras.
imo osx is a DE, just like kde or gnome. if apple wanted, they could probably get it going on linux, opensolaris and any other unix related kernel…
Just a DE like GNOME or KDE? Obviously you don’t know much about OSX.
OS X is just a DE on top of Darwin. I can easily put KDE on my mac. I can even remove the OS X DE altogether and just have Darwin + KDE. The only difference is that OS X can’t be put on top of Linux/Plain BSD (right now).
OS X isn’t “just a DE on top of Darwinâ€. Darwin is a subset of Mac OS X.
Graphical Mac OS X relies on a number of technologies which are present in Darwin and aren’t in Linux, FreeBSD, etc.
Perhaps they could be ported (some of them have already been), but without the source to the GUI parts, getting it up and running would be fairly tricky (NetBSD’s Mach-O support might well help you out, mind).
So why isn’t OSX just a DE?
The same reason “Red Hat Linux†isn’t just a DE.
Mac OS X is the entire operating system. Darwin makes up a part of it. If nothing else, there are a fair few non-DE-related technologies which you only get in Mac OS X and don’t exist in Darwin, not to mention all of the development frameworks which aren’t intrinsically tied to graphical applications.
A desktop environment is just a set of apps and a window manager running on top of a more or less complete OS. OS X minus darwin is equivalent to GNU + X + Toolkits + DE + a number of other technologies in the Linux userland (like DBus, HAL, the variety of daemons needed, etc.). Darwin is pretty much just the kernel and a few other things.
For a start, Aqua doesn’t run on X11. When you run KDE on Mac OS X, you need to start an X server. OS X does not run the X11 server under normal use. Instead, the GUI is based on Apple’s own display technology called Quartz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_(graphics_layer)
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.
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.
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
but linux didn’t fork like the bsd’s.
Then why are there so many Debian-based distros? If that’s not forking, then what is?
A distro fork is like FreeBSD and PC-BSD.
A kernel fork is like FreeBSD and DragonFlyBSD.
Debian can fork all it likes without the linux kernel ever forking.
And for all those years in which Linux was undeniably faster at SMB and BSD’s performance was nothing short of embarrassing?
No doubt you are referencing, as have so many other well meaning but misguided people, Kris Kennaway’s tired and outdated old MySQL benchmark which pointed out a flaw in Glibc. (Thanks for that, BTW.) See the more recent benchmarks conducted by Nick Piggin, using the current Glibc, and note that Linux is now faster than FreeBSD:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/npiggin/sysbench/
What can I say? Nah, nah, neh nah nah? Or perhaps I should say that the idea of focusing on such a benchmark to make an absolute claim that one is faster than the other is silly and meaningless.
I’m glad you are pleased with FreeBSD. Not all of us have the same requirements and tastes.
Edited 2008-04-08 22:06 UTC
The Nick Piggin benchmarks are outdated too. From Jeff’s blog:
http://jeffr-tech.livejournal.com/
“We tracked down our problem with the performance drop above 30 threads on Nick Piggin’s mysql benchmark to conservative settings for the pthread adaptive spinning. We see a big gain relative to where we were before. Frankly at this point we’re splitting hairs with linux and I don’t really care where we stand. We had a tremendous problem and we resolved it. Time to move on..”
The only thing that shows FreeBSD performance clearly ahead of Linux is with pipes- yeah I know, its hardly something that will make a Datacentre manager start ripping out his Linux boxes and replace them with FreeBSD
The people who modded you down should go to http://fxr.watson.org/ to at least have a founded opinion. I wouldn’t say FreeBSD kernel source is as much better than Linux as their manpages are. They are similar in both performance and dirtyness.
If you want to read both clean secure code and useful manpages, try OpenBSD.
I’d say it was more a combination of timing (hello AT&T lawsuits), licensing choice, and culture that led to Linux taking off
culture was a big part of it. Linus brought together the minix community and the gnu community when he used their tools. linux wasn’t forked the way bsd was. He gave the opportunity for a lot of people to contribute to the kernel. Developers like that sort of thing as it was the ultimate hackOS. It feels good to say you made a difference to an OS that many people use.
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
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.
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.
That’s why Zero server OEM ship it , that’s why zero Desktop OEM ship it.
License give permission , the BSD protection clause give no permission at all.
Only Apple sale and control it.
Yes , but I was talking about BSD. Apple is not BSD , BSD based yes , but not BSD licensed.
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 …
”
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
I’m not sure why I’m replying to a Moulinneuf comment, but, for the benefit of everybody else reading these comments:
1a. Darwin most definitely is “real†Open Source according to the OSD (which, given that you capitalised Open Source, is obviously what you’re referring to).
1b. Darwin, under the terms of the APSL 2, is released under a Free Software license (see http://lists.apple.com/archives/Publicsource-announce/2003/Aug/msg0…). It’s not GPL-compatible, but GNU don’t believe that detracts from software being classified as Free, and they most definitely know better than you or I, given they defined the term in the first place.
1c. Neither the OSI nor the FSF have any problem explaining how to find the source, share the source, copy it for personal use or make copies for a friend, make derivative work or sell it to other people because the license expressly permits those things. Are you perhaps thinking of the original APSL 1.0 or minorly-revised APSL 1.1?
2a. The source is available from http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
2b. Just because a version of Mac OS X has been released doesn’t imply that a version of Darwin has been as well—the two are distinct products on slightly different release cycles.
3. Server OEMs may not ship FreeBSD, but plenty of hosting providers run FreeBSD. If you counted operating system usage by OEM sales, Linux wouldn’t even register on most people’s scales as existing, which is clearly a flawed methodology.
4. The BSD license was intended to be corporation-friendly. If any of the NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD projects wanted to steer things differently, they could have done: they could have released their respective operating systems under the GPL if they wanted to (note that Linux and glibc, as well as numerous other pieces of GPL and LGPL code include snippets of BSD-licensed code, thanks to the non-advertising-clause BSD license being broadly compatible with many different licenses).
5. The very fact that Apple was able to release the commercial Mac OS X including portions of FreeBSD, NetBSD and CMU Mach (all of which are BSD-licensed) cements firmly the notion that the BSDs are more “commercial-friendly†(as touted). By definition, it can’t possibly mean the reverse. The only thing that Apple’s licensing of Darwin under the APSL indicates is that Apple didn’t want to be quite as “commercial-friendly†with Darwin as the other BSD projects.
6a. Apple is “BSDâ€, because the operating systems they ship (the only operating systems they ship, and the operating systems people often buy their products for) are all demonstrably BSD-based, even if much of it is no longer licensed under the terms of the 3- or 4-clause BSD licenses. The code still has BSD lineage. Great big chunks of it.
6b. Apple is, by definition, a billion dollar BSD company.
1a. Lost cause to try and explain to you what **Real** means. You clearly show that you know only what someone else told you.
1b. Your actually agreeing with me when I said Darwin is not under the BSD but BSD based …
1c. Actually that’s where your wrong , but then that subject and discussion you where not part of until now and still are not asked to be consulted on.
2a. No , some source is availaible but it’s incomplete.
2b. Just because your redefining everything , that don’t mean reality and I have to agree with you , work on real Open Source project for a change and you have acess to Source code at all time. There is no original , derivative or other project in open source.
You know Real Free Software and Real open Source is not defined against GNU and the GPL nor by the FSF and OSI , it’s pathetic to read people such as yourself who are ALWAYS comparing it to the GPL.
Case and point the GPL is not used by Darwin or Apple.
3. Two wrong as usual. GNU/Linux OEM sale register and due to your twisted comment I know you get it that I was talking about Both Service and OEM box witch are in decline for BSD.
4. Corporation friendly means : it create corporation , that use it and that contribute back to BSD. That is what mostly lacking in BSD …
Also it’s a trow away clause as in don’t sue me , it’s not even a license , License give written permission.
5. Apple is not BSD , BSD based yes , releasing , promoting fostering cooperating fully with BSD , NO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X
Proprietary EULA
There NOT using BSD for there commercial Licensing …
6a No , BSD based.
6b There not using BSD as is or contributing to any BSD projects be it financially , in code or development.
—–
look , if Darwin was Open Source and BSD the other BSD would work perfectly on Apple hardware due to similar hardware support as they would be using the same code , they don’t.
Also they would support ATI to the same degree that Mac OS X does as they would use the same code , they don’t.
And a very long list of hardware that Mac OS X and Darwin support that other BSD simply don’t.
But that’s not all , Office and Adobe and other Apple Mac OS X software would also be supported natively on BSD as they would share the exact same code , they dont.
How do you explain that ? Not asking you at all , I know : You don’t , you turn around it and redefine thing to fit your bushit !
Go and read up on “compatible licensesâ€. Just because a project is open source doesn’t mean its license is magically compatible with every other open source project ever created. The Linux kernel includes GPL-licensed portions of FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD: those modifications can’t be fed back into the BSDs they came from, because doing so would taint the license; the same applies here: to port the code back would cause chunks of the source BSD operating system to be licensed under the APSL, which the BSD folk don’t want!
HOW would they? Since when are ATI’s drivers open source? Since when do the other BSDs use Aqua (which, incidentally, isn’t available as part of Darwin)? And since when do the other BSDs use Darwin’s IOKit driver model?
Again, read up on “compatible licensingâ€. Also look up the driver model of Darwin, which is fundamentally different to that of any of the other BSDs.
Those applications don’t even work on Darwin, let alone another operating system entirely!
I don’t need to explain it. You’re talking largely about Mac OS X, which nobody ever claimed was open source. This entire article concerns Darwin, which is an Open Source, Free Software, operating system which contains a subset (go and look that up, as you’re clearly unsure what it means) of Mac OS X’s capabilities and technologies.
Seriously, what on earth are you smoking, and can I get some?
Quoting myself : “How do you explain that ? Not asking you at all , I know : You don’t , you turn around it and redefine thing to fit your bushit !”
I am not discussing license compatibility.
Same code is compatible with itself , ever heard of Firefox and GNU/Linux distribution , etc … , I guess not.
Talking compatibility with Darwin … Rather if it was Real Open Source the same code would be inside the other BSD kernel.
They don’t , and they could if they had the same code as in Darwin …
But yet your claiming it’s Open Source … Your rather proving my Apple NOT CONTRIBUTING to other BSD point …
Again , I don’t need to read compatible licensing , because I am not talking about license. It’s a rather moot point too because the BSD protection clause as no known License incompatibility. But since the code is not real Open Source it’s not availaible for inclusion in other BSD.
That’s my point , why is something said Open Source fundamentally different from the code that it originate from ?
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/…
– Microsoft Office 2008 for MAc
– Adobe photoshop element 6
Yet I see another reply from you … Wrote it first this time , one can hope …
No , about Darwin witch you claim is entirely availaible and Open Source …
BSD is Open Source , you claimed Mac OS X was BSD , only you still believed in your nonsense …
Yes.
No , but certified as such by both OSI under OSD and by the FSF under the free Software guidelines.
Hell no !!!
No , but you clearly failed Open Source development 101.
Because under your redefined Open Source definition ,
Darwin ( open Source ) and Darwin ( in Mac OS X ) are two different product , where as if it had been real Open Source both would be the same source code under different branding/name.
There is nothing serious about you.
I don’t smoke anything , nor do I take medication or any drugs of any kind and my sanity is getting checked weekly due to my job.
Yes , stop taking drugs , reality and concept get easier and simplier to understand. It’s called common sense and having some sense.
In real Open Source ( witch is a development method ) there is no closed code or license switching needed or approved , the source is always available , people share the source amongst themself to improve the source. There is no other product , derivative or original.
Novell will share it with Red Hat , who will share it with Debian , who will share it with Novell. Thats why it’s called real Open Source.
Debian will share it with BSD , Debian will share it with BEOS , or with Windows or Mac OS X , because it’s Open Source.
Apache will run on any OS and share it’s code.
Firefox will run on any OS and share it’s code.
Yet Darwin don’t even share it’s source code with the code it originated from or is the same as the one in Mac OS X.
BSD is itself a darwin awards …
Edited 2008-04-09 00:53 UTC
Talking compatibility with Darwin … Rather if it was Real Open Source the same code would be inside the other BSD kernel.
The ati drivers used in OSX depend on proprietary additions which aren’t available without explicit permission from Apple.
They don’t , and they could if they had the same code as in Darwin …
You are confusing two completely different things here. Any Apple-branded proprietary libraries and drivers are not part of Darwin and thus aren’t distributed freely. Just think about it: Linux IS open-source and all, but you can still use proprietary nVidia drivers on it, and proprietary software on it, and Linux STILL is open-source. The same applies here: the base system (Darwin) is open-source, there just are proprietary libraries, drivers and applications running on top of it.
In other words what Apple did was switch to a license away from BSD and add code but made it proprietary in order to restrict and control it’s inclusion , they are also trying to suggest that there kernel was open sourced when in fact only some part was released.
No , as I said in real Open Source , there is no restricted code or license switching in order to control an addition , you may have different branding/naming and different code added but the code its always developped and available as Open Source.
[/q]Any Apple-branded proprietary libraries and drivers are not part of Darwin and thus aren’t distributed freely. [/q]
That’s where your wrong , they are removed in the Open Source release , there also Apple branded **derivatives** and **derivative** driver , thats why Darwin open source don’t do what Darwin Mac OS X can do and don’t have the same size and code.
Yes , rather its Free Software , but if one use your example it’s the same as having the Linuz Kernel under APL with some proprietary adittion by Apple and the Linux kernel GPL by the GNU/Linux community , the difference with BSD is that the GNU/Linux community invested in it’s kernel so that it’s the proprietary version who is behind or very close , where as the BSD community as not invested in there own kernel to be on par with Apple. Also in real Open Source Red Har and Novell and the other commercial contribute code so that Debian and others can benefit from it too and vice cersa.
[/q]The same applies here: the base system (Darwin) is open-source, there just are proprietary libraries, drivers and applications running on top of it. [/q]
No , they are added to Darwin in Mac OS X , not on top of it. That’s where you and your friends are getting confused here , code is removed from Mac OS X Darwin to Open Source Darwin. Also the addition on top of it of the derivative by Apple is also a problem under Real Open Source. Because your supposed to make and contribute Open Source addition.
But the real problem is not Apple or what they do in itself. It’s what the BSD let them do and what BSD do not do to be on par with itself aka Apple Mac OS X and Darwin so called Open Source.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Diagram_of_Mac_OS_X_archite…
BSD as nothing as complete or as close as the above , only talking in Darwin.
Hence Darwin is what BSD could have been.
Moulinneuf, you are speaking in the language of the backside.
Darwin is a project that contains the underlying OS framework which OS X is built on. Darwin inherits a lot of things from NeXT and NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. The driver model was always different in NEXTSTEP. This is not some Apple conspiracy, it’s a driver model designed in the mid 80’s that was “better than what was there already” because of the nature of Mach (attempting to be a Micro Kernel and not monolithic, like BSD is/was.)
OS X is an OS based on the Darwin framework. It is a seperate project that shares source, but is not directly related to Darwin outside of the fact that Apple provides *their* Darwin changes in *their* repository.
Whether you like it or not, most of your claims could fertilise my lawn.
Wow, for such a condescending tone in your messages you really don’t know the difference between kernel/BSD userland –which is what Darwin is– and the rest of the OSX layers/technologies.
Darwin is a subset of OSX, it is foundation of sorts. And it is fully open source.
Your last comment about ATI drivers and Office was precious… LOL.
It would seem you are basing your arguments on the assumption that Darwin is not BSD. That is correct, however, neither are the other so called BSDs. BSD is a UNIX that ended distribution in 1995. The contemporary so called BSDs are all BSD derived, and them being licensed under the BSD license doesn’t make them any more the BSD UNIX. This fact undermines your arguments as they are based on a false assumption.
the usual misconception is that macosx is on top of freebsd.
It’s only a partial misconception, in fairness.
Mac OS X’s BSD userland is based upon FreeBSD (although it’s been modified a reasonable amount since, given that as of Leopard it’s UNIX certified). Parts of XNU also contain chunks of FreeBSD code.
It’s not just FreeBSD, though, but it’s the biggest single source for BSD-family code in Darwin and Mac OS X. That said, the BSDs also borrow from each other, so it’s tricky to be precise in some cases.
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.
Surely that depends on what your aims are?
If your aim is to write code and know that millions of people use it because your license is so liberal, and you get satisfaction from knowing that (evidently lots of people do, after all), then who’s been disadvantaged?
If your aim is to write code with the intention that nobody can fork it in a way which prevents others from doing the same thing (as per the GPL and similar licenses), then obviously the BSD situation isn’t going to be amenable to you.
Neither is inherently right or wrong, it’s just that different people value different things.
(As an example: I build websites for clients for a living; I know that thousands of people use my code every day, and to me that’s what makes the job worth doing; they don’t even know that I’m responsible for it (unless something goes wrong and I have to talk to them!). Other folk don’t really get anything from that scenario, and would much rather, say, build a site for themselves, and enjoy the fact that people know who built and runs it).
That’s not even funny anymore because almost nobody get to use BSD code as is , they get to use BSD based code. The difference is that the BSD rights and privilege are illegally removed and that the funding and future development goes into making proprietary drivers , software and OS that are cutting in directly with BSD. The BSD are a laughing ridiculous joke as soon as you compare it to it’s commercial derivative : SUN , Apple , Microsoft.
Who is disadvantaged you ask again ? the BSD themself , they are removing themself from being competitive and are dependent on others’ good will and contributions at all and every level.
How come the BSD can’t be on par in the fundings and contribution of code and number of user’s vs project that are all 4 decade ( that’s 40 years ) yougner if not less then they are themself. Why do they need the Hardware contribution of other OS distributors ? Why don’t they have major one themself ?
If the lies your telling where reality and truth , then there would be no need for GNU/Linux at all , there would be no Apple as it would be made obsolete by BSD itself due to it’s rate of development and it’s quality of code and accepted prevelance in all aspect of computer OS.
No , BSD is inherently and completely wrong , if it where right then the majority of people who created or particpated in it in the past would still be associated with it, proud to say so too , and most people would still work at it as it is most people who have really worked on BSD and are excellent and good at what they do are doing something else.
BSD is chaos , everything goes , the problem with chaos and why it appeals to kids and people like you in theory is it’s a good thing if your as blind as you are and only look at the good side witch is what people like you only do and talk about. Once you look at it’s bad side it completely negate it’s good side.
Sure it’s fun to say millions of people use BSD code , the reality is the million use closed derivative and the reality is that it’s not really fun to have ZERO support be it from BSD themself , its commercial proprietary derivative or anyone else for BSD.
BSD is fun in theory , in reality most people will work on other OS or at something else. Because there is no real demand for BSD job or any future for it.
Darwin is what BSD could have been , if BSD ad not been inherently and completely wrong.
The proof is in your example you work at building website instead of at building BSD and being paid to do so.
People who support BSD believe in freedom but that means they have to actually compete. You have to fight for freedom; not hide under the skirt of lawyers and the EU. You can’t just say you are for competition without accepting the possibility that you might not have what it takes. You are not entitled to victory just because you are open source.
Brendan Eich from mozilla is one of those who gets it. He doesn’t want the govt to make people use firefox. He knows that the only way mozilla and other open source software can win is if they are actually better than the closed source alternatives DESPITE all the money Apple and Microsoft can put into their projects. And despite the fact they can use your code.
Open source should win on its merits, not ideology. It can be more secure and more responsive to its users than products based on marketing with style over substance. But you can’t just say open source open source….you have to make it work and try to reach out to people.
Edited 2008-04-09 22:03 UTC
Moulinneuf seems to be suffering from the delusion that there is “a BSDâ€, and that there is an active “BSD projectâ€, and those people might or might not feel a particular way about something.
All of the operating systems (which are actively developed) which are considered part of the BSD family are derivatives. None of them are the canonical Berkeley System Distribution, because no such thing is actively maintained.
All of this bluster about whether Darwin is or isn’t “a BSD†is mostly tripe. Talking about driver compatibility and binary compatibility is pointless: DFBSD, PC-BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD all have different driver models and run different sets of software. If it was all interchangeable, there wouldn’t be any point in any except one of them existing!
Aside from the userland, CMU Mach 2.5, on which NeXTSTEP was based (and so is the ancestor to XNU), cannot be publicly released because it requires a license—which you can’t buy any more—to the original (encumbered) BSD UNIX code. It has just as much in the way of BSD lineage as FreeBSD, et al, do. Lots of that code is still part of Darwin today, whilst other parts have been updated to borrow directly from more modern BSD, in the form of FreeBSD.
Any Apple-branded proprietary libraries and drivers are not part of Darwin and thus aren’t distributed freely. [/q]
That’s where your wrong , they are removed in the Open Source release , there also Apple branded **derivatives** and **derivative** driver , thats why Darwin open source don’t do what Darwin Mac OS X can do and don’t have the same size and code. [/q]
Look: if they’re not part of Darwin in the first place, they haven’t been removed. You’re complaining that Mac OS X isn’t open source. That’s fine, but that’s not what you’re saying you’re doing—you’re claiming to be talking about Darwin.
And more to the point, what the hell is “Darwin Mac OS X�
Have you even read any of the links you’ve been posting?
Given your fondness for Wikipedia, try this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29
(Note the “Source model: free and open source softwareâ€, if you’re hard of thinking).
BSD don’t exist its a delusion of mine … Only someone who is himself extremely delusionnal would say such a thing.
Yet DFBSD, PC-BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD exist and you name them because you heards there name … That’s BSD and your contradicting yourself. The BSD in there name should be a big enough clue …
Your inherently and completely wrong.
Nevali wrote:
“All of the operating systems (which are actively developed) which are considered part of the BSD family are derivatives. None of them are the canonical Berkeley System Distribution, because no such thing is actively maintained.”
BSD *no longer exists* (as an actively developed project). Period.
From Wikipedia:
“Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is the Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995.”
His point is that all of the things that use BSD in their name – FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc. are *derived* from or *developed* from the original BSD, which has not been maintained (according to Wikipedia) since 1995.
There is nothing delusional about this point.
Edited 2008-04-10 16:41 UTC
The point is that the success of Mac OS X, or any other derivative, does not equal to success for BSD and Darwin because they’re not the same things.
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.
Wow, prejudices and unfounded assumptions are fun! 🙂
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.
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’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. 🙂
That is true but doesn’t change the fact that the underlying OS is being designed and developed with servers in mind. Darwin includes many features in the kernel to improve experience for the desktop user.
Additionally, the discussion in this thread has been distinguishing between the DE and the underlying system and in the case of both DesktopBSD and PC-BSD they are as you say yourself both FreeBSD underneath.
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.)
Or may be it just shows how successful BSD is thats why they chose it in the 1st place.
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
To see Darwin’s position within the BSD family tree and UNIX timeline, just have a look here:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/share/misc/bsd-family-tre…
that timeline completely ignores mach, nextstep and openstep. you might get the wrong impression that osx is only a fork of freebsd. this big unix timeline is much better:
http://www.levenez.com/unix/
I would go further than that… Darwin is based on the core of NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. The FreeBSD parts only happened when Apple replaced/updated *STEP components with them, or extended the core in to areas that the *STEP’s didn’t cover. The “comes from FreeBSD” is factually incorrect. “Converged with FreeBSD from disparete trunks of the same overall base” would be more correct.
This impression should not be concluded from the timeline. Darwin and Mac OS X are no forks of BSD, but they have a strong relationship to BSD. Maybe this is not clearly shown by this timeline.
Yes, this one is much better and saves you from buying expensive wallpaper for your coding booth. 🙂
It was a nice article, a bit short and limp on the details but good nonetheless.
Has anyone successfully installed GNOME, KDE or XFCE on top of Darwin?
I’ve tried several times without success.
A how-to guide would be really appreciated.
Yawn.
Shame about the lack of development from the OS community on OpenDarwin for example. Apple has done a great job of scaring everyone away.
with CoyotOS uKernel is the next big thing. I wish there were more mature project with a uKernel (except QNX/MacOSX) since it permits rapid prototyping and user space development/testing (and possibly debugging) of drivers. CoyotOS is approaching a state where it can be used by Hurd. As far as I understand if Apple truly embraced open source it could be done via GNU-Darwin.
It doesn’t.
Hurd is near watch out.
April fools was 8 days ago, dude. The Hurd? Are you kidding me?
Actually that’s not 100% correct. Linux took off because BSD was in the court room and had an uncertain future.
Edited 2008-04-09 11:39 UTC
No, that may have been true in the early 90s, but a lot of Linux’s success has been in the late 90s to especially the mid-2000s. That success is not because BSD was in the courtroom. They could have easily overcome that early obstacle while Linux was still struggling to work on common hardware and run common software. Alas, they did not, for better or for worse.
First it doesn’t say much at all, the average OSnews reader probably know more about this stuff than he does, and second it’s more or less just wrong anyway. So yeah, that’s a great way of wasting peoples time. If people want to learn more about OS X and Darwin basics there are better places, I guess even wikipedia for instance will have it more correct, not that I have checked.
I say tomato you say …
I find articles like this helpful to bring non-geeks into the osnews site. Those same people may become more educated and more likely to visit osnews and reduce the number of people you appear to be so critical of in your comments (e.g., gamers, etc…).
Just call it software. I don’t know that it really matters if OS/X is the mach, the OS, the DE, …. I could go on, but why? If it matters to you, great. However, it does not have to matter to anyone else…
Reading the comments makes me feel like I am back at home listening to my children–It is! No it isn’t!….
At the end of the post, there is a request for information/comments. Since someone asked asked for assistance, maybe you could give assistance–not wise-cracks. Remember, the post asks for information/comments to clarify the post rather than claiming the information presented was “the truth”–whatever that is…
The author is trying to provide some information (as I think everyone has a certain right to provide–even if you disagree with what is stated/said). Instead of failing at social skills class, nicely educate (the writer and the readers) with facts (i.e., don’t just complain about the shortcomings…).
If you think I am being critical of you and you feel “upset” or ready to “blast me back into yesterday with a comment,” think… Or do you like how reading this comment makes you feel.. Hmmm? Sometimes being put in the other shoe helps you feel what if feels like to take another path…
I do not read every article on osnews, and my failing to read them all is not because the articles are not osnews-worthy. Rather I read what interests me. If I start reading and I realize the article is too “shallow” or “to deep” for me, I simply go back and get another article.
The world is made up of all types, and I think it is a GOOD thing that we aren’t all the same. Don’t you?