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I agree that bundling shared code is an elegent solution. It is a shame that the GNUStep Guys can't go this route. I would love to see a framworks and Display Ghostscript based GNUStep distro, running over the Linux kernel and with a GNU compatibility layer. Such a layer would be similar to Apple's BSD layer with unix-like shared resource support. A totally free implementation of OpenStep with near full OS X source compatibility and the ability to build cross platform fat binaries....drool.

I agree that bundling shared code is an elegent solution. It is a shame that the GNUStep Guys can't go this route. I would love to see a framworks and Display Ghostscript based GNUStep distro, running over the Linux kernel and with a GNU compatibility layer. Such a layer would be similar to Apple's BSD layer with unix-like shared resource support. A totally free implementation of OpenStep with near full OS X source compatibility and the ability to build cross platform fat binaries....drool.

What Linux and BSD need is something like Cocoa (or Carbon or whatever it's called) in OS X. Yes, X is part of the Unix legacy. No, it's not needed anymore except in a server, multi-user environment. Desktops ain't that.

Hmmm. Like Cocoa. If only there were some free alternative...

Yes, X is part of the Unix Legacy. No, it's not needed anymore except in a server, multi-user environment, or ANYTIME YOU WANT A FREE GUI.

Jiminy Cricket. X is bad? Is there an alternative that is Open Source, is ported to the major platforms, has drivers for the major devices, and has thousands of applications written for it. How much work would that be to create? How much work would it take to fix X? (Hint: How much worse was Xfree86 four years ago?)

The reason we keep X isn't because we have a religious need to network the GUI. VNC is a better solution for that anyway. The reason we use X is because it works and is free.

Anyway. IHBT. IHL. IWHAND.

Not only that, but OS X is really OPENSTEP 5.0. And we all know that NeXT is really dead! Where can I send flowers while I read email with GNUMail.app and design software with Gorm.app? :-)

Not only that, but OS X is really OPENSTEP 5.0. And we all know that NeXT is really dead! Where can I send flowers while I read email with GNUMail.app and design software with Gorm.app? :-)

As a suggestion, you might want to consider Cocoa/GNUstep instead. It's LGPL'd, so you can certainly develop closed source with it, it's *far* superior to GNOME, KDE, .NOT, MFC, or anything else you will ever use, it's the most Rapid RAD system around, and your code is portable to various Unices including Mac OS X (with a Win32 backend in progress).

Disclaimer: Note that I'm a biased bigot; but many other people love these well-designed OO frameworks too; and I think more folks should check them out.

Oh, yeah quartz graphics, well, we have display postscript (DPS), which was also what the old NeXT OS used, so we could have NeXT-like OS X apps on our darwin boxes :)

Also, the interfaces in Aqua (Cocoa et al) are very open. They are well documented and very useable. There exists an effort to bring an open version of the NS* foundation classes to any OS that wants GNU.

Apple gives a lot back too. They have several developers with commit bits in the *BSD projects, and recently, they gave their KHTML and KJS changes back to the KDE community, and they will keep doing so (because the LGPL license demands it). Also, wrt their compiler toolchain (gcc) they have given back stuff like precompiled headers, which will help make gcc a faster compiler.

Apple is very OSS friendly, in fact, to (not verbatim) quote Mr. Steve Jobs: "We at Apple think that Open Source rocks".

Apple is being very open source friendly. You can't compare Apple with Microsoft, because you'd be comparing apples and oranges (no pun intended), mainly because Apple is more an harware vendor than it is a software vendor. I'd rather see Apple succeed than Microsoft, mostly because Apple has become more consumer friendly (and that includes developers/geeks)

See gnustep.org. Better yet, contribute to the effort.

I say Windows, Linux, MacOS because that's what they are.

Mac OS X is not Mac OS, in any way, shape, or form. That's like saying BSD is Linux because it shares some of the Linux's API. It is a completely different OS. It is not mere pedantry, it is simple correctness.

As to what you're saying about various APIs ... the point is that the app was not written for Linux, it was written for a specific API (most of which is POSIX and X11 at its root, with other libs on top of those). And you completely missed this point when I said "an app 'for Mac OS X' that is also written for POSIX" when you responded that it uses "way more APIs than what are defined in POSIX." No. In my hyopthetical, it is written *for POSIX*. You can write an app for Mac OS X that uses the POSIX API primarily, or exclusively. The point is that it is all about the APIs, not about the OS.

You're complaining that PART of Mac OS X is proprietary.

Yeah I am, because it's the parts that all the apps use.

Since I wrote such an app last week -- an app for Mac OS X that doesn't use any proprietary libraries -- I guess I'll have to disagree. Even if you were correct that all Mac OS X apps use the Cocoa or Carbon libraries -- which you aren't -- there is an open source port of much of the Cocoa API.

Like GNUstep?

Alternatively, you could write your Mac app in Cocoa and port to Linux with GNUstep.

Unfortunately, those open source developers will almost certainly end up writing Cocoa IRC clients or something - ie software that can only be used on a proprietary platform.

This whole story is here because most free software is portable, it's based entirely on open standards and free APIs.

Technically, cocoa is an implementation of an open standard: open-step.

You're easily impressed then. Darwin was mostly already open source, and has such poor hardware support it's nearly useless outside of the Mac.

The fact that darwin does not run on your hardware is irrelevant. The fact that can't or don't want to use the code that is open sourced does not change its value.

They were legally obligated to give back the KHTML improvements - yet Safari itself is not open source, despite it being a merely average web browser in terms of features and standards support.

Their contributions to FreeBSD have been in the order of a few trivial patches and some test suites according to Jordan Hubbard who seems to consider the positive marketing as their biggest contribution.

What, pray tell, have they returned that they developed themselves outside of Darwin, which as I've already pointed out, is a nice gesture but ultimately useless. Chess.app?

• Gcc (altivec and objective-c related code)
• Quicktime streaming server.
• CDSA.
• Open Play.
• Netsprockets.
• Rendez-vous.
• Header doc.

What the hell does that mean?

It apparently means you couldn't bother to educate yourself before posting. Here's a starter link: Mach Scheduling and Thread Interfaces. The long and short of it is that each process is run in a main thread that may start other threads, none of which are tied to a particular processor and all of which are given time slices at a priority. So if I have four things going at once, they (and any other threads they start up) will be pushed to whatever can handle them, and quitting two doesn't lead to a situation where one CPU is left at 100% and the other is idle.

No it isn't. How many multi-threaded programs have you written? It is nowhere near as simple as just creating a thread and setting it loose in a program that wasn't designed to be multi-threaded.

My guess is that I've written more than you, but I've used an API (Cocoa) that doesn't penalize me for the use of threads unless it has to. I'm sorry you're stuck with something less elegant, but I look forward to you writing a single OS X app and seeing what OpenStep made possible over a decade ago.

They don't just idle faster. They do work faster as well. Why would they just idle faster?

Because, as those who actually read my post saw, they are unlikely to be pegging the CPU at 100% even when they are in use. Do you think your word processor (unless it's a really crappy one) really needs 3GHz to keep up with your typing? Unless you're talking about something specialized like a render farm, your argument isn't valid. These are desktop systems, and being twice as fast as a Mac only means your computer is twice as wastefully idle as mine. I'd estimate that I'm hitting the burst limits of my system less that 1% of the time.

Further, if you are talking about something like a render farm then you will find that one of the abstractions provided by Cocoa for threads is called an NSConnection, which also allows the processing to abstract to another machine altogether! If you won't get a Mac for whatever reason, at least look into something like GNUstep so you can actually start taking advantage of the systems you already have.

You know, the GNUstep Project would love to have Chimera working on their platform.

(For those who don't know: GNUstep is a free implementation of the OpenStep specification, of which MacOS X is a direct descendant. There's a very high level of source code-level compatibility between the two platforms.)

Is there any reason why Chimera could not be ported to GNUstep?

With the exception of Open Office, you've just described Mac OS X.

And if only these open source developers would stop with the "distribution of the week" approach and direct their efforts towards something like a simple GNUstep install, they'd actually have a shot of getting some OS X software brought over to Linux and FreeBSD.

I'd add Steve Jobs because of the NeXT stuff. NeXTstep was a great OS: unix with outstanding GUI - if I see someone telling me about this or that new feature of Windows XY, most times I can say NeXT had it 10 years ago....
Then came OpenStep, an outstanding open, cross platform standardization api, and OPENSTEP, the NeXT implementation. (There is even an OpenStep for Solaris by Sun; but they dropped it in favour of Java...)
Mac OS X is the evolution of OPENSTEP (though they skipped the open part of the api :-/)

So, in the end Steve Jobs did change Personal Computing in some way!

p.s.: If you want to help this cool technology on really free platforms, check out GNUstep [gnustep.org], the GNU implementation of OpenStep/Cocoa.

I doubt they'll just sit around while their API is emulated.

'their API', is, to a very large extent, taken from NextStep, which they bought to get Steve Jobs back. It's already been cloned (pretty much) by the GNUStep project.

Heh, I had really hoped that with the flash and marketing power of Mac OS X, Objective-C (and OpenStep) would finally start to build the bigger and more powerful community that it deserves.

Still, GNUstep is starting to get to critical mass, and in the last few weeks, I've seen several new people show up on the mailing lists, saying they had just discovered it and were interested in helping. Hopefully we can still make a go of it.

No, from the page:

Once we will have a fully functionnal Darwin binary compatibility on NetBSD/powerpc (if that happens some day), we will just have to grab MacOS X libraries to run any MacOS X program

This means, NetBSD might have the original OS X GUI (including overhead and eye candy effects ^_^) in the future.
Making GNUstep binary compatibe with Quartz should be the solution you're looking for (in that case, it would also work with the original Darwin).

Running Gnustep on NetBSD? It has most of the NEXTStep/OS X libs already ported over to Linux (And therefore easily ported to NetBSD)...

Not by Apple, but GNUstep is coming along nicely.

But we'll never get to the point where someone can produce a decent Mac app by taking their Unix sources and recompiling.

... GNUstep would be THE way to go.

You should take a look on GNUstep + 3DKit ...

GNUstep (url) is an OpenStep implementation. It aims to be multiplatform (even if for now it's mostly linux/bsd based... under Windows it's alpha state), and as Mac OS X is also an OpenStep implementation, it's really easy to write GNUstep apps and port them to Mac OS X (in fact most time you only have to create a new project in ProjectBuilder, add your files, redo you nib with InterfaceBuilder, and voila, it's done). Take a look at GNUMail for an example of a GNUstep/MacOSX program.

Big advantage of GNUstep is the OpenStep framework (Foundation and AppKit), which is really powerfull and easy to use, along with RAD GUI builder (Gorm on GNUstep, InterfaceBuilder on Cocoa); You could program in Objective C or Java (But Objective C is nicer imho), or even in ruby/smalltalk .. ;)

It should be easy to add scripting to your application with StepTalk (url) and AppTalk (url), and 3DKit is a framework for creating 3D Scenes (url) ...

If you want some tutorials, check this site

For your GUI, take a look at GNUstep. It supports Linux, the BSDs, Solaris and Windows and is (pretty much) compatible with Cocoa.

For your 3D graphic stuff, take a look at the GNU 3DKit.

You can probably port to Linux fairly easily using GNU Step. However, you are probably better off rewriting the GUI using some Linux-native toolkit like Gtk+: Macintosh applications tend to behave in ways that appear inconsistent and cumbersome to Linux users.

Or, perhaps someone ought to start a project similar to WINE, but for the Cocoa API?

I really don't know why, but GNUStep doesn't seem to be very popular. GNUStep is an implementation of the OpenStep specification and they even track changes from Apple! It's what you are looking for - with a little effort, applications can be made to compile under both GNUStep and Cocoa (completely legal too, since OpenStep is open(duh)). Foundation seems to be pretty much complete and AppKit lacks just a few Apple-specific things like Drawers and Sheets (which will be added at some point in the future).

Really, GNUStep needs a little more exposure - I switched to a Mac, but I still think GNUStep is great and could be something better than GNOME/KDE.

Yeah... it's called GNUstep. NeXT and Sun created the OpenStep specification a few years ago (before NeXT became Apple, and Sun decided Java as the future). The core (libFoundation) is currently about 99% done (with an occasional bug fix). The gui portion (libAppKit) is about 80% done.

Sorry, the Open Source project is called GNUStep.
AfterStep is just a window manager.

Regards, Tobias

1. Cocoa, OS X's "standard" API. Cocoa is basically a newer version of NeXTStep with a new name. It consists of an extremely elegant object-oriented GUI application API sitting on top of POSIX. This is what Apple wants people to program new applications in.
2. Carbon. Carbon is a "transitional" API, that basically consists of an updated version of the old Classic Mac OS Toolbox, with anything related to unprotected memory, cooperative multitasking, or such things removed, and a lot of API cruft in general cleaned up. Apple estimates that about 20% of an average classic mac os program will have to be changed in order for it to work under Carbon. The recommended use for this is that if you have an existing codebase written for the Classic Mac OS Toolbox, you won't have to rewrite from scratch-- you can just carbonize it. Writing new applications in Carbon makes Apple sad, and it isn't as pleasant as writing in Cocoa, but people do it anyway becuase unlike Cocoa programs, Carbon programs can run under both OS 9 and OS X.
3. Java 1.4.

That is, of course, unless he was refering to some proprietry closed-source product that doesn't run over X11 and is therefore completely off-topic...

For a more heavy-duty WM, I recommend WindowMaker over GNOME or KDE. WindowMaker is fairly light-weight, and has a much cleaner appearance and feel. Another nice feature about WindowMaker is that it has a lot of the nice Apps that you see in OSX, like the mail program and the column-file navigator. Better, its easy to port an OSX program to WindowMaker if you have the source, as its based on OpenStep.

Window Maker is what I'm currently running at home. I used to use AfterStep, but got fed up with it for various reasons.

Contrary to what dh003i says, it is strictly a window manager - it doesn't have any applications associated with it, except for WPrefs.app). The applications like Mail.app (well, it's called GNUMail.app) and the "column-file navigator" (called GWorkspace.app) are part of GNUstep, not Window Maker.

Evidently, you have never heard of OpenStep, which NeXT and Sun released as an open standard in 1994. From which, of course, GNUstep was derived. GNUstep, being a GPL'd implementation of OpenStep (and tracking changes with Cocoa), offers a Free set of Cocoa frameworks for UNIX systems (Linux, BSD, and so on) and even Windows.

Letting all the new Cocoa developers know about GNUstep. It's a GPL'd implementation of Cocoa, and runs on all UNIX platforms (Linux, BSD, etc.) and Windows (the Application Kit graphics backend is in an alpha state). We have several applications written (including Interface Builder and Project Builder clones), some of which are completely portable to Mac OS X (like, GNUmail.app). It's fun and cool.

The more that we can get new Cocoa developers to become aware of the project, the more nifty cross-platform applications we'll have. Oh, and there's a Windows graphical backend in an alpha state too. So, your Cocoa work should be easily portable to Windows soon too.

And one more reason: OmniNetworking has been set up to build with GNUstep. Write your Cocoa app in Objective C, write some makefiles for GNUstep, run your Cocoa app on Linux, BSD, HP-UX, etc. You might want to use GNUstep's IB and PB clones for development, however, since it's easier to go from GNUstep to OS X, than vice-versa.

You do realize that Cocoa is portable, right?

Objective C and Cocoa are cross-platform as well: GNUstep. Runs on UNIX platforms, alpha state under Windows, graphics backend can be easily ported to BeOS or anything else.

And your code also won't be portable to GNUstep.

Cocoa is portable and ported. See GNUstep

Part of the operating system is (Darwin). But all the graphical stuff you see is not. It is not related to Linux, it *is* related to Mach and BSD. Darwin already runs on x86. Furthermore, if you need to have your Mac OS X applications run on other platforms, you can use GNUstep, but you'll have to avoid QuickTime (patent issues) and some things that are only partly implemented in GNUstep currently. After that, you can run Cocoa applications on other UNIX systems (like Linux, *BSD, HP-UX) and in the future, Windows (there is a Windows graphics backend, but it's in an alpha state).

No, but GNUstep is.

I'm not sure that I agree than Carbon will make your app easier to port. There is an open-source, cross-platform reimplementation of most of Cocoa called GNUStep, which is based on the old OpenStep spec (just like Cocoa). Using GNUStep you can run the same (or very similar) code on, say, Linux and OS X. See GNUMail.app for an example. Here is a screenshot of it running under Mac OS X, and here is a pic of the same program running on Linux via GNUStep.

>[Qt is fully GPL] Only when compiling for the X11 target

Not if you purchase a license! Qt is well worth the money!

Only if you're in a for-profit business. Qt/Mac will expire after 30 days. Most hobbyist developers (such as myself) don't have upwards of $1500 for a widget set. And according to this FAQ entry, Trolltech releases Qt Free Edition only for operating systems that are free software. Thus, Trolltech will not release Qt for Windows until ReactOS is complete, nor Qt for Mac as free software until GNUstep is complete.

What I find more intersting is why is the slashdot crowd so obsessed with this idea? If apple did the switch to intel processors do people on slasdot really belive that:

• Apple hardware would be less expensive?
• OS X would run on commodity (non Apple) hardware?
• If OS X would run on commodity hardware, the pricetag would not be high or the hardware support low?

I find it quite ironic that the crowd that touts open source software seems to have an ongoing dreams of running proprietary software. The funniest thing is, most elements for building an open source variant of OS X are around:

• The code of darwin, the kernel, is available and compiles on IA32, albeit in a limited fashion.
• The Cocoa libraries have an open source clone: Gnsustep.
• Re-implementing Carbon according to the spec, which is publicly available and quite clear would clearly be less work than project WINE.

The thing that bothers me about applications/ desktops/ wm's/ etc that are made to look exactly like microsoft applications [...] and less emphasis on making something unique and earth shatteringly ground breaking.

Not true

Two points.

• GNUStep is not a window manager. It is an implementation of the OpenStep API as published by NeXT several years ago, now known in its current form as Cocoa, the development environment that Apple is pushing for OS X. In principle, GNUstep allows one to write applications that build and work under Mac OS X and Linux/BSD. One example of such an application is GNUmail, which is excellent. On a side note, I can't emphasize enough how many things this OO development framework gets right, in comparison to certain other Linux development environments, which are only now random-walking their way toward sanity. :) So helping out GNUstep is NOT a redundant waste of time by any means.
• Apple products carry a price premium, but it's not nearly as awful as you describe. In fact, their notebook line is probably (IMHO) where they shine brightest. If you compare a T-series Thinkpad (a far better comparison), the margin narrows. 256MB/40GB/1.8GHzP4 for the Thinkpad, and $2500. For the same price, you get the PowerBook with 256MB/30GB/667MHzG4. The CPU speed on the Apple suffers, even when Altivec optimizations are included, but on a laptop this is a much less important concern. More critically, the Apple gets an easy 5 hours of battery life, and the Thinkpad only 3 hours. The PowerBook has additional features, such as twice the video memory, solid Firewire support, and full gigabit ethernet -- which are important to keep in mind.

When it all comes down to it, you get what you pay for -- and it doesn't matter much if you buy from a high-end PC manufacturer or from Apple. So pick what suits you best!

Apple will almost certainly never port to generic x86. Ignoring every other argument about whether or not it would be profitable for them to do so, Apple still needs Microsoft Office, and I promise you that the second that Mac OS X runs on generic x86 boxes is the second that Office development stops and the Mac's life support lines get pulled. (Don't get me wrong; the Mac's user base has been revitalized and the software lineup is infinitely better than four years ago when Office 98 was the rage, but if you think that the Mac would run without Office v.X in the business world, you've got another thing coming. As long as the Mac continues to have this dependancy, I will consider it on life support systems that are run by Microsoft.)

Meanwhile, if the idea of a very OS X-like environment on your box is highly appealing, stick your coding where you mouth is and go help the GNUstep project. They are improving every day, and ever little contribution that brings them more in line with OS X will help tremendously. Recently, two projects --LinuxStep and Simply GNUstep--were even spawned to create GNUstep-centric Linux distros. I am very hopeful that these will mature into a fully open-source desktop OS that is just as easy as OS X from a user standpoint and also returns the Mac's kickass development system to the Linux world. Go check them out, give them a hand if you can. And don't say, "It's not nearly complete enough"; it's a circular argument. The only solution to that is to go help.