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Wednesday May 17, 2006
Apple closes down OSX
According to this MacWorld article Apple is closing down the Darwin kernel for x86 processors. It used to be open source, but now they are adding a lot of restrictions, for fear of "pirates".
The Darwin open source Mach/Unix core shared by OS X Tiger client and OS X Tiger Server remains completely open for PowerPC Macs. If you have a G3, G4, or G5 Mac, you can hack your own Darwin kernel and use it to boot OS X. But if you have an Intel-based Mac desktop or notebook, your kernel and device drivers are inviolable. Apple still publishes the source code for OS X's commands and utilities and laudably goes several extra miles by open sourcing internally developed technologies such as QuickTime Streaming Server and Bonjour zero-config networking. The source code required to build a customised OS X kernel, however, is gone. Apple says that the state of an OS X-compatible open source x86 Darwin kernel is "in flux."
Sounds like the end of Darwin to me. After all why would anyone want to hack that kernel, when OpenSolaris is around? In fact why does apple bother at all? Why not just switch kernel and use OpenSolaris instead?
More on Slashdot.
Posted at 11:52AM May 17, 2006 [permalink/trackback] by Henry Story in General |
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