Darwin 7.0 Released

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."

Comments

Re:Heh Heeeh heheehhheehee

[csoto]

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 :)

Re:Heh Heeeh heheehhheehee

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Heh Heeeh heheehhheehee

[sakusha]

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?

Re:Who do GNU/Darwin think they are?

[falcon5768]

And to be totally truthfull a) Apple is a hardware company NOT a software one. They have been getting more and more into the software biz these days, but they have always been a hardware company that makes the OS for their systems, much like higher end server companies make tailor or even make OS's for their boxes. b) There where Power PC clones, Infact my first mac wass a powerbase 180 made by PowerComputing which was one of the best ones out there, but at the time it killed Apples sales and put them even more in the red than before., plus while the quality off some was great, mush better than Apples (best feature of mine, ability to use serial AND PS/2 mice and keyboards and Apple and PC VGA conectivity without using an adapter), some where horror shows on line with most second rate PC manufacturers and really brought down the macintosh's quality.

Job's not being stupid and needing to fix all the red left from before, killed the clones that sucked and bought out the ones that where great so he could have those people on staff for him (which is why Apple has all the tech support documents for Power Computing still on their servers in support). It was that along with killing the projects sucking away money without showing anything for it (newton, which I still love and still use my eMate, and the old Apple server department, the ones that used IBM Unix in them) and the releace of the G3/iMac that saved the company and allowed him to do the big change, which was recoding the old NeXt OS, what we now know as OSX.

Re:Heh Heeeh heheehhheehee

[sakusha]

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.