Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Darwin 7.0 Released

Posted by timothy on from the evolving-cats dept.

Trollaxor writes "The source code to Darwin 7.0, corresponding to the lower levels of Panther, is free for download less than 24 hours after the new Mac OS X v10.3 release! Check out the Darwin FAQ and the Darwin Q & A to get acquainted with this Open Source BSD operating system."

4 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Heh Heeeh heheehhheehee by csoto · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not so much bragging rights as an effort to keep the Apple Public Source License above the fray. It's a "quasi-free" license (as in "free speech"), but still "kind of proprietary." By giving up the "free" stuff almost in sync with the "$129 stuff," they're saying they truly believe in open source software.

    (sort of :)

    --
    There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
  2. Re:Heh Heeeh heheehhheehee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, the Apple Public Source License (APSL) has been Open Source since version 1.1 and considered Free by the Free Software Foundation since version 2.0.

  3. Re:Heh Heeeh heheehhheehee by sakusha · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sure, there's lots of goodies in Darwin that aren't in Linux. The most significant is Darwin Streaming Server, a/k/a QuickTime Streaming Server, which Apple has generously given back to the Open Source community. It's been ported to RedHat and other platforms since the first release of the source.

    But more importantly, Darwin gives everyone access to the low level internals of OS X. I've seen several bug fixes come from Darwin coders and incorporated back to the main codestream. For example, in the early days of OS X, the SCSI code was broken so ElGato rewrote the SCSI kext and released it for free, giving guys like ME with legacy SCSI hardware a solution, until Apple could incorporate that fix into the next release. This may sound like it's just a way for Apple to capitalize on the work of the Open Source coders, but it's significant in that you don't have to wait for Apple to fix bugs. And isn't that supposed to be one of the big advantages of OSS?

  4. Re:Heh Heeeh heheehhheehee by sakusha · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dear Mr. Troll:
    DSS also supports nonQT formats like MP3 and MP4, and can run on QT for Java and other nonproprietary clients. You should only care if:
    1. You're in the business of producing and transmitting media.
    2. You're a Linux bigot that is jealous you don't have this capability.