OpenDarwin Project Shutting Down

niabok writes "According to a message sent by Rob Braun to the OpenDarwin mailing lists, the OpenDarwin project will be shutting down, saying that 'OpenDarwin has failed to achieve its goals in 4 years of operation, and moves further from achieving these goals as time goes on.' The project's servers will remain online long enough to allow developers to move their various projects elsewhere."

Comments

Re:Sad

[QuantumFTL]

Thanks, I misunderstood the announcment. Still sad though, Apple should be giving more back to OSS - it owes much of its comeback to OSS (though not Free Software because it doesnt' seem to like GPL stuff much, like many corporations).

Re:Apple has been pissing me off

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

blah I just hope more Apple users smarten up and switch to Linux or a real BSD system.

And I hope more users get over the whole macho thing and give up using an OS where every trivial little task becomes some monumental quest where you have to prove yourself worthy by constructing scripts, .rc files and kernel configurations, and switch from BSD and Linux to MacOSX. But that's just my opinion.

Re:What a surprise...

[Shrithe]

Somehow I don't think the end of OpenDarwin is going to mean Apple will stop lifting code from the BSDs. Why should it? BSD is not and never has been about creating a world seperate from commercial software. They're not "lifting" the code, they're using it according to it's liscence, which is something nearly every vendor, commerical or not, does, if only for OpenBSD's ssh implementation.

Re:BSD's fault.

[evilviper]

they essentially enable legalized plagiarism.

Plagarism is failing to credit the source, while the BSD license requires proper atribution.

but these licenses are from nearly overly altruistic motavations.

Any non-commercial software (including GPL'd) is written from altruistic motivations. Who are you to say how far that altruism should go? Indeed, many of the major pieces of software we use wouldn't have become standards if they were under a more restrictive license.

With BSD's sabotage -- the license -- that help and the FreeBSD code has been thrown into the closed system of consumerist capitalism.

Apple surely wouldn't have used Linux, even if FreeBSD wasn't there... they would have paid some company for some closed-source Unix code, or perhaps have used the NEXT code directly, rather than accepting the GPLs limitations. The fact that OS X is a better operating system for the BSD licensed code is an indirect benefit to me, and you, and everyone else, while the alternative wouldn't at all benefit the public at large.

Frankly, it's sad to see how the more extreme Linux zealots are using the BSDs as a scapegoat for all of Linux's shortcommings.

Re:What a surprise...

[Halo1]

The point is that Apple has been saying what great OSS supporters they are, and now they are even discontinuing the tiny bit of code sharing they have done.

No, they are not. Apple's code sharing has always happened via its own website. OpenDarwin was not run by Apple, although several Apple engineers supported and actively participated in its various projects.

That doesn't mean that it's sad that Apple has not been able to create a satisfactory policy which allowed external developers work directly on Darwin and contribute to it. It's not like they can't do it in general, as in case of the WebKit project some external developers even got direct commit access (which is more than what the OpenDarwin people wanted, afaik they just wanted their fixes to be incorporated by Apple).

I guess in case of XNU, things conflict(ed) too much with Apple's product secrecy policy...

Re:BSD's fault.

[Sam Ritchie]

...what you hear are people blaming BSD for Linux's problems?

GGP said:

Linux has not yet come close to hitting the tipping point on the desktop for the typical semi-technical user. With Apple's help, it would be much closer. With BSD's sabotage -- the license -- that help and the FreeBSD code has been thrown into the closed system of consumerist capitalism.

This does sound to me like someone blaming BSD for Linux's (perceived) problems, and I agree with GP that it's a pretty sad assertion. I don't agree it's an attitude that can be generally attributed to 'extreme [GNU/]Linux zealots' - most I know would consider any negative opinion of the Linux desktop to be heresy, and any hypothetical Apple assistance would be derided as an undesirable dumbening of self-evident UI perfection.

Re:Sometimes I wish I weren't such a sux programme

[jcr]

Qt is internally a work of art

This is precisely why GNUStep gets no traction: the Linux crowd actually believes that a cross-platform abortion like Qt is acceptable. Of course, this isn't surprising for a community that still hasn't admitted to itself what an abomination X11 is.

-jcr

Re:Sad

[Weedlekin]

Ah, so BSD-style licenses explain why Apache, the various Mozilla projects, and Python have been total flops that nobody uses for anything.

Let's get real for a moment. Linux has become popular on servers for the same reason Java did, i.e. it generated a lot of press buzz, and has companies like IBM and HP pushing it to their customers (which they call "partners" to make things look cosy and pally). This means that the majority of corporate Linux setups (and by corporate, I mean any corporation, big or small) were chosen by people who don't know or care what the GPL is, have never heard of Stallman or the FSF, think a Gnu is a type of ungulate that lives in Africa, and would be happily using one of the BSDs if that was what their big "we take care of everything" hand-holding "partner" was telling them to use instead. Geeks within such companies have zero real-world input into any money based decision-making process, and use what they're told to use, hence the fact that Microsoft can sell them Windows and MS-Office for their their desktops, server-side Windows with Exchange for departmental services, Visual Studio for development, while Linux with Apache etc. live on their web server farms. If these people gave a fart about things like the GPL or what their pet geeks think is great, they wouldn't let anything from MS within a mile of their corporate buildings, and would be using open source tools to build their Linux-hosted webs instead of costly proprietary stuff like WebSphere and Tivoli, which are just incidentally supplied by those same "partners" who recommend, install, and support Linux.

The GPL is therefore no more relevant to Linux's success than a lack of it has been to the immeasurably greater success of Microsoft's products. It is popular on servers because it works, is free as in beer, leverages existing corporate UNIX expertise, and a lot of business people have heard of it thanks to their everything-including-the-kitchen-sink IT service "partners", whereas few have heard of the various BSD variants. By the same token, it is a flop on the desktop because, for far too many non-geeks without access to a geek, it doesn't work properly with the hardware they have, fails to leverage their (albeit minimal) expertise with other operating systems and software, and most consumers either haven't heard of it, or know the name but are extremely hazy about what it is.