Re: Apple's Darwin commitment

Jordan,


Am 14.09.2005 um 01:56 schrieb Jordan K. Hubbard:

> Darwin is released solely as a collection of reference bits [...]

here's clearly some erosion going on.

In the Mac OS X 10.0/10.1 days, Darwin was, updated in CVS regularly.  
One could watch source code being developed in small changes, compile  
the stuff weekly, etc ...

With 10.2 and 10.3, public source were updated for official Mac OS X  
releases only. If something stopped working between releases, you had  
to wade trough a huuuge patch. But still, a standalone OS could be  
compiled successfully, resulting in more than one OpenDarwin release.

With 10.4, the do-it-yourself OS is obviously gone. According to your  
post, one can peek into all those source files, one can try to  
compile a project or two and one can hope this works on a OS X  
installation. The possibility to run own modifications on a self- 
built OS (where you have control over everything, not just the Apple- 
provided excerpts) is a thing of the past.

> I regret that some people feel "duped" by this, [...]

Because it's more and more work from Mac OS X release to Mac OS X  
release to get something working/useful out of Darwin?

> [...] but I don't think that was due to any misdirection on Apple's  
> part so much as unrealistic and unfounded assumptions on their part.

Strong hints to Apple's intention of Darwin being a standalone OS are  
those Installer CD releases. The most odd and most recent one being  
Darwin 8.0.1. What's the purpose of this release if it can't be  
rebuilt from "Darwin" sources released at the same time?


Sure, you could say it was a misleading publication or a mistake or  
some yadda yadda.


> Let's all read that again together:  It's a resource for other open  
> source development efforts. It's a source code reference for  
> developers to read while they're developing code for Mac OS X.

It _was_ a standalone OS.

It _was_ a source of enhancements for Mac OS X.

It _was_ a community around it with that small, Apple fueled Linux  
competitor in mind.


> There are plenty of FreeBSD and Linux distributions that already  
> fill that niche more than admirably

Neither of them features Apple technology.

> it would buy Apple precisely nothing to go head to head with them  
> with a Darwin distribution.

It would buy them a head to head race regarding low level  
technologies. Mac OS X without all this Carbon, Cocoa, Classic,  
whatever, ... featuritis. Does Apple fear this competition?


> Apple has even gone so far as to co-found projects like OpenDarwin,  
> [...]

OpenDarwin was invented by Apple to get rid of those nagging  
enthusiasts trying to get patches and enhancements into Darwin CVS  
and up into Mac OS X. That's how it looks from the outside, Jordan.


Have fun,
Markus


P.S.: Yesterday, I was about to recommend Joshua to try to build a  
full Darwin to get his research/ideas into a living system. Right now  
it looks like he should invent his own OS instead.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/