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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."
*Extremely* old news.
Also, "Mac OS X" has ALWAYS been proprietary. It's sensationalistic and shoddy journalism to say that "Mac OS X is now closed". Mac OS X has ALWAYS been closed. It's Darwin that has been open. And "Darwin" is more than a bootable OS: Darwin is Apple's open source strategy AND an OS; but the usefulness has always come from the open source components of the OS, not the usefulness of Darwin as an OS itself. Darwin's usefulness as an OS is, shall we say, "limited" at best, and always has been.
This has been beaten to death on the darwin-dev list, and there is no new information. Apple has taken no new recent action whatsoever, and in fact, the most recent action is that it has opened up more source code in the x86 tree, not less. Indeed, all of the traditional Darwin source with the notable exception of the kernel itself:
The thing that's not open in the x86 tree is xnu (the kernel), and it's not possible to create a fully bootable binary x86 Darwin OS, as it is for PPC. In the Darwin/OpenDarwin community, this has been discussed for months.
In fact, this article by Rob Braun (formerly of Apple, and a member of the OpenDarwin core team) was published in February 2006: http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200602/apple.html. This was then covered on slashdot, to which Rob issued this response: http://www.opendarwin.org/~bbraun/slashdot_respons e.html. These two discussions cover the issues very well.
I predict, however, that this Macworld UK article will be seen as "new news", and will be picked up by the tech outlets, and trumpeted, exactly as the headline hopes, as "Apple closes down OS X", even though the source for pretty much everything (except the kernel and drivers) is still available. In other words, everything that a normal person needs Darwin sources for is available. In 5 years, I can think of ONE instance where I looked to the kernel source for confirmation of something, and that was only for *confirmation*, and only because it was convenient - not because I needed to rebuild the kernel. I know of no other non-developer/programmer Mac OS X adminisrators/system engineers/enterprise users who have ever had any reason to rebuild the kernel or any drivers.
If the kernel and driver source were available, it would, however, be used for one purpose: to churn out hacks to get OS X to run on non-Apple hardware in a much faster and higher-quality way than has been possible to date. Will OS X be hacked anyway to run on non-Apple hardware, and will it continue to be, regardless? Yes. If people are willing to replace enough of the OS with the ugliness they're using to get it to work, absolutely. But it will continue to be ugly. Releasing kernel and driver source for the current iterations of OS X on x86 will only make their jobs infinitely easier, while brining little to no benefit to conventional users, power users, and administrators of OS X.
I'm sure people will find a way to make a huge deal about this, though, even though a huge deal has already been made about it in various forums, including slashdot and other tech news outlets, and on several of Apple's mailing lists.
I'd like to point out that this was my initial reaction: http://listserv.cuny.edu/Scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0602 &L=macenterprise&T=0&P=58970
Since then, Apple has posted all of the APSL sources, and it was just a legitimate, honest delay. The PPC and x86 trees are at virtual parity with the sole exception of the kernel and drivers. So I'd submit that "Apple closes down OS X" is highly inaccurate for two reasons:
- Most of OS X was never "open" to begin with; if he wants to say "Darwin", great, but I suppose "Apple closes down Darwin" wouldn't be as sensationalistic and guaranteed to get as many page v
Pirates: Arrrrr! We'll be havin' your operating system now matey...
There is no new news here.
The state of Darwin x86 hasn't changed since the day the Intel-based Macs shipped.
In fact, Apple's only action since then has been to release MORE source; APSL sources that correspond to the entire PPC Darwin tree with the exception of the kernel.
This has been discussed for MONTHS in other forums, has already been covered by slashdot, and has been beaten to death on Apple's mailing lists.
Darwin x86 *as an OS* is dead. The actual part of the Darwin strategy people cared about, i.e., the Darwin OS *components* being open, and all of the projects (like WebKit), etc., are all open, alive, and well on x86 and PPC. Apple releases parity Darwin source releases with each Mac OS X release.
See for yourself:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
The only item of note not present is one thing: xnu (the kernel).
All of Apple's open source projects, all of the APSL-licensed projects - which Apple is under zero obligation to continue releasing - and all of the GPL-licensed projects (of course) are still there.
So, in sum, paint this as some kind of bad news if you want, but if anything, it's OLD news, and actually, the pieces of Darwin people actually care about and use - indeed, both of the things you allude to in your post - are still alive and well on x86.
The only thing you can't do is make a bootable Darwin OS for x86 any more. And if you can explain to me why anyone would want to do that for any useful purpose, well, I'm all ears.
Because as we all know, closed source software prevents piracy!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
This development just reinforces the likelihood that the Mach(-ish) kernel is going away in 10.5. If I were Apple and planning on switching to a new in-house developed kernel, I'd most definitely want to clear myself of obligations of showing it to the world... at least at first until it's clear that the code is mostly clean, by which I mean fairly efficient and exploit/bug-free.
This is an awful lot of drama though if that were the case but trying to figure out Apple's true motivations is always a crap shoot.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
"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
Darwin is, and has been, two things: a bootable OS, and Apple's open source strategy with all of the open source projects and components in general.
All of the "Darwin" pieces that have always been open on PowerPC are still open on x86 with the exception of one notable item: the kernel. Most people who leveraged "Darwin" never even touched the kernel. Almost all of our any many other enterprise customers' usefulness comes from the open source OS components of Mac OS X and projects like WebKit, Open Directory, Darwin Streaming Server, etc.
For a time it appeared Apple had killed off everything but the GPL pieces of Darwin x86. However, that was a delay resulting from the fact there's basically one person at Apple packaging and setting up the sources for distribution. Since the subsequent release of the rest of the sources, Apple has done parity releases of all traditional Darwin components and projects on PPC and x86 - with the exception of the kernel.
In other words, the actual usefulness of what the vast majority of Apple open source users actually used "Darwin" for is still there. If you want to argue that its usefulness is all of a sudden severely crippled because the kernel is gone, well, in the enterprise community, one we found out that the rest of the sources would continue to be released on x86 as normal, the kernel being gone was barely a blip on our radar.
But hey, if people want to make a big deal and say "Mac OS X is now closed!" (what does that even mean?), let them.
And this had to happen the very same day i was planning to alter, rebuild, and replace the OS X kernel from source code, oh well..
//WR
I hate to reply to myself, but checking Apple's offical Darwin site, XNU's sources are still posted. The only thing that could even suggest Apple's going to stop releasing the XNU sources is that if you go into Sources (X86), XNU is not shown, but to my knowledge, those sources are just for packages that are different or not included in the PPC version.
...
Thumbing through the XNU source, all the assembler and C sources for the Intel platform is still there
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Alistair you are generally correct. A lot of the Mac OS X / Darwin kernel (XNU) is Apple grown and NeXT before that but several aspects have and continue be infused with content from FreeBSD and others (Apple also submits things back upstream). The aspects that came from FreeBSD are generally still available via the open source version of XNU PowerPC source tree (it is coded to support both PowerPC and x86) and items outside of XNU are available from the source trees for both x86 and PowerPC.
Of course drivers for devices only found on PowerPC aren't available in the x86 source tree (which makes sense). Also drivers for x86 hardware isn't available nor has it been stated by Apple if they will or will not be made available (for all we know Apple could be waiting for the unification coming in 10.5).
The only real loss to developers is not having IOKit from the x86 source tree however the IOKit available from the PowerPC tree is likely nearly the same if not the same (it contains some ifdefs for x86, etc.).
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.
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