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Mac OS X Kernel Source Now Closed
littleghoti writes "Macworld is reporting that "Thanks to pirates, or rather the fear of them, the Intel edition of Apple's OS X is now a proprietary operating system."
Mac developers and power users no longer have the freedom to alter, rebuild, and replace the OS X kernel from source code."
So you really do believe that open source software should be viral in that anyone who uses it should be forced to open up all their code?
Not that there's anything wrong with that -there are good arguments in favor of that view. The problem is that corporate reality sucks sometimes.
I have to wonder if some group or other won't go back to the last open version of the kernel code and fork it into a new project or maybe some alternative to Darwin? Also, what does this mean for the Darwin project?
Would something like that even be worth it without some vendor support or tie-in? It seems a shame to let such a nice chunk of code go to waste.
Transistors and Beer!!
"If your OS is secured by keeping the code private, pray it's never, ever, released." Only takes one slip into the public to break that "security model."
Then there's those OSes that *assume* publicity of the source code and have different expectations for ensuring security. These "published" OSes also happen to be the "more secure" OSes available.
Go figure.
P.S. I'm not only referring to GPL'ed and BSD'ed OSes. There are other published OSes, the source of which are publicly accessible.
Disclosure: Mac OS X user here. Linux user here. Reluctant Windows user here.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I'm no expert, but I'm not sure this is true. The kernel for Macs and BSD is very different, the MACH Kernel is no BSD kernel. The parts Apple took from BSD relate to Networking and the user tools we often use from a shell, i.e. the shell and common unix commands most Mac users play with from time to time. The diaply code (Quartz, Aqua etc.) was their own and I think they have kept this closed.
For the BSD stuff they took, they wern't required to post anything back to the BSD communitity but my imprssion is that they have in every case. I don't think this would have been any different if they had taken a GPL equivelent, unless the GPL prevented them linking to a closed source kernel.
The code they have taken for Safari was GPL and I think they have contributed back to this. There have been numerous discussions around this as they did make huge changes optimed for Power PC which they contributed back but were of very little use to Linux on Intel and I would be interested to hear what people think now they have contributed back their Intel code.
I have to say that I am no expert in this, working mainly in the identity and directory field. However Apple's work with Directory Servers and Clients is on a par with the open source contributions of SUN, Novell and OpenDirectory and something I watch with great interest (and far beyond what I would expect from a company which mainly makes home based Macs and iPods.
The deal here is that Apple is a company, not a bunch of (talented) hackers. They're here to make money, pay employees and execs, and (hopefully, 'cos I'm one) raise value for their shareholders. They're not a charity and they're not there to make the world a better place (well, Steve may disagree... let me rephrase: they're not there to make the world a better place for free).
The reason I'm replying to you is that you say "But they did grasp how to utilize open source to their advantage, but it was always in a way that was really not quite in the spirit of the open source community". I think that's unfair. Just because they don't want to lose control over *one* piece of s/w doesn't mean they don't get it - indeed they may "get it" all too well, if they're planning on releasing server-based machines in the near future... you don't really need much more than Darwin to have a server, so they probably would lose money to people self-building and self-installing "clone" machines...
Where they see there is an upside for them, I think they've been reasonably generous - Webkit (despite some initial negative feedback, they responded and made things better); there's a story about how to use Quicktime Streaming Server to get MythTV on your cellphone elsewhere on the main page; they put a lot of effort into gcc; etc. etc.
I don't think you can expect much more from a company - so it's not a 'sad day', they do indeed 'get it', and as you say - it's their right to do things as they see fit. I think they do more than most...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I know I'm in a minority, but I used Darwin/x86 quite a bit since it had NetInfo support so I could use it for shared login, and while I could switch to everything to LDAP, it wasn't worth the effort. I currently got an Intel Macintosh, but maybe my next purchase won't be a Mac, because I do/did use Darwin quite a bit. That being said, the Macworld UK article doesn't cite sources, so where is it getting this info? I still see the xnu sources on OpenDarwin's site:
http://darwinsource.opendarwin.org/10.4.6.ppc/
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If they are locking the source down, I for one would hope that it might indicate making a move to solaris. Especially after the recent news that they were porting some of Solaris' file system over to MacOS, moving over to full solaris may leverage the best of unix and the mac os GUI system.
Nope. If you didn't see this coming, that's because it happened months ago. And just like months ago, the xnu ppc source code is still being published.
What's more, I have personally used the ppc kernel source to compile an x86 kernel. I haven't tested it, since I lack an ICBM, but I'd assume it would work.
The only difference I noticed was that the official x86 kernel includes Rosetta, while my self-built kernel didn't[1]. If I was to take a wild guess, it'd be that Apple does not have the right to distribute the in-kernel parts of Rosetta, and accordingly cannot distribute their x86 xnu branch.
[1] Note that there may well be other differences, but I hacked on binary loading stuff, so that one really caught my eye.
I happen to like fixing kernel bugs. It's fun, and it makes the bugs go away. (not suggesting that Apple should delibrately add extra bugs just for the thrill of fixing them though) Kernel source is educational too.
Oh well. I can still judge a Mac on hardware alone, and then install Linux if I get a Mac. That's what I did last time I bought a computer.
It sure irritates me to see BSD groups actually helping proprietary vendors compete against open source. Thanks buddy. Stallman got at least one thing right.
I thought that too. Cringely says, here in his 420 column, that Apple has Darwin running with a full Windows API implemented in-house, and has the rights to release this from a prior Microsoft/Apple agreement. The possibility is that all Windows apps would run in OS X natively. Closing the Intel-Darwin source under a "security" excuse could be exactly what they need to do to upgrade everyone's machine to run Darwin with a Windows API, possibly on a native BSD instead of a BSD over Mach...
Here's the problem, performance sucks relative to my Intel 20" iMac, it hangs frequently, and the network driver can't read the mac-addr. I also can't set the mac-address using ifconfig, so end result, is no networking. Screen resolution is also not able to match what the screen is capable of so the aspect ratio is wrong.
In short, while it's a cute hack and the novelty of seeing OS X running on Dell hardware is certainly nifty, it's far from production ready. Why did I dare to anger the Apple gods by trying to pirate OS X? I'm ok with it personally. I own 4 Mac's personally, have a G5 tower on my desk at work. My employer makes me carry this 20lb Dell around when I travel and I'm certainly not going to add weight by putting my powerbook in my luggage as well. So if I can have a few of the comforts of home-computing on the road with me, then I'll do it. It may not be completely legal, but I'm not taking any money out of anyone's pockets and I'm only using one instance of my OS X 86 license at a time.
What has been your experience with Apple's XServe Clusters ?
But regareding your hard facts and your experience, what do you know that the technicians who built the following systems don't?
So can you describe your experience with Xgrid and why you think it's so bad. And regarding software, what problems do you see with the following software packages, or have you not used any?