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OpenDarwin Project Shutting Down

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hard-to-hit-a-moving-target dept.

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."

10 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. At least there'll be some profit by dada21 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With a PageRank of 8 and an age of 4 years, that domain will sell to some SEO company very VERY fast. I wonder what they'll get for it.

  2. Sorry, but... by megaditto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Too bad their dreams did not work out, but frankly, they will not be missed.

    Sure, they ported fink and some libs to Darwin, but that's pretty much it. ODP has been dorman for years, since 2002, pretty much.

    Is Apple to blame for their luck of support? I do not think so; since they do have a neat thing going with http://developer.apple.com/opensource/

    --
    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
    1. Re:Sorry, but... by jcr · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Too bad their dreams did not work out, but frankly, they will not be missed.

      They really missed the point. Darwin was never intended to be yet another open-source UNIX derivative like Linux or the BSDs. Its whole purpose was to make life a bit easier for people writing drivers for Mac OS X, so when they started beating their chests about how Apple was oppressing them, those of us in the Mac community bascially said: "Umm, who the fuck are you anyway, and why aren't you just using Mac OS X or Linux like a normal person would?"

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  3. Sad but not unexpected by caseih · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apple never supported the open source version of darwin in any way beyond lip services, some server space, and releasing source packages in mostly unbuildable form. They took from many open source projects but returned precious little to the community. At the end of the day Apple does what immediately benefits Apple. It's sad, but it's likely the threat of hacking OS X to run on white box computers likely is the greatest reason for Apple to not release vital parts of the latest OS X source code. Yet this will still happen. In the meantime, Linux continues to grow and become better all the time. There just was no need for OpenDarwin without Aqua. If all you want is a unix-like OS to run servers, Linux suits the bill just fine.

  4. Re:I wonder by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Yep. As soon as Intel Macs came out, they stopped updating the open version of their kernel. Goals? I don't think goals had much to do with it.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  5. Re:Sad by aitikin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Extremely unfortunate for those of us who are OSS enthusiasts on OS X Gentoo on OS X is lightyears behind Fink. No GUI, very little support, and an update right now is impossible, because they have so many bugs that have to be worked out. I just tried to sync my portage tree and upgrade everything and I get errors galore! If people put effort into it, I'm sure it would be useful, but there haven't been many updates on it in forever and the forums are a major dissapointment. Gentoo has also impressed me with the community it has, but the Gentoo on OS X forum takes weeks for a response.

    --
    "Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
  6. Re:Sad by hritcu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Unfortunatley, it does seem to be hosted on the OpenDarwin servers, so I wonder what the long term plans are for the maintainers of the project. I hope it can continue to exist, as I for one would miss the nice ports style installation and management on OS X.

    OpenDarwin was just a host for DarwinPorts. They will just find another host. The interest in DarwinPorts is high enough so that you don't have to worry about them disappearing.

    --
    If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
  7. Re:Sad by m874t232 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    though not Free Software because it doesnt' seem to like GPL stuff much, like many corporations

    Well, I agree that Apple isn't giving back enough to open source, but they have no hesitation using and shipping GPL'ed stuff. Two important examples are gcc and bash. And with gcc, for years, NeXT managed to comply with the GPL while avoiding giving anything useful back to the gcc project.

  8. Re:Sad by LizardKing · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And with gcc, for years, NeXT managed to comply with the GPL while avoiding giving anything useful back to the gcc project.

    Apart from an implementation of the Objective C frontend and runtime. But don't let facts get in the way of your ill informed ranting.

  9. Re:BSD's fault. by cbr2702 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Proponents of said licenses would question just what it is the contributors want to protect. Did they turn over the code for public use or didn't they? You can't plagiarize something that was offered to you as a gift -- and that's sort of the point of open source, isn't it? That your work becomes part of the commons?
    Becomes part of the commons -- and stays there.

    I question the motives of open source developers who use the GPL because it affords them plaudits for the authorship of their code. The GPL doesn't really care about any developers' desire to receive credit and accolades for their efforts. The only real reason the GPL requires that works derived from GPL-licensed works must also be GPL-licensed is political. The GNU Foundation wants to spread the political cause of Free Software. The GPL is one way to do this.
    I don't know what the true motivations of the GNU Foundation are in promoting the GPL, but I do know mine. Software that I have released under the GPL has not been political. It does something I find useful and that I think others might find useful as well. At the same time, I put some work into it, and if someone makes improvements I would like to be able to use them. If I wanted instead to be sure I got credit I would use the origonal BSD liscence or one of the many other ones that require attribution.

    Many other developers lack these political ambitions, however. For them, the BSD style license is perfectly fine. It protects them in various ways, like limiting the developers' liability, without the entanglements of Richard Stallman's political agenda. At the same time, it allows them to offer some code to the community, without any selfish motives of social status.
    When you release something to the community with the intent for it to be free, is it selfish to want it to remain free?
    --


    This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.