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."

Sad

[QuantumFTL]

I personally use Fink (and love it, for all of its flaws), but it's sad to me to see a good alternative source for OSS on OS X bite the dust. The only reason I'm able to enjoy a proprietary OS like OS X is because of the availability of many of the best OSS packages (if not all), and the compatability this affords me with linux-based environments. Hopefully Gentoo on OS X [metadistribution.org] will go somewhere - does anyone know how it stacks up against Fink right now?

Re:Sad

[code shady]

I haven't tried Gentoo on OS X but I have tried DarwinPorts, the OS X version of the BSD ports system. If you are familiar at all with the ports system, then DarwinPorts will be right up your alley. I love it. It doesn't seem to have the breadth that fink does, but it's still rather nice.

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.

Re:Sad

[taybin]

This isn't the end of the darwinports project. That project was just hosted on the opendarwin servers.

Re:.... Apple is NOT open-source, by any means.

[megaditto]

All of Darwin's source is 'open' in the sense that you are free to view, modify, and recompile it at will (unless you refuse to their fairly liberal license). All of it will work in OS X. With 10.3, you may rebuild Darwin from source, then 'drag&drop' the propriatory junk on top, and it will work! It is no longer possible to do that with 10.4_x86 since the TPM-related stuff is not released.

An example of open-source compatible OS would be OpenVMS in my mind, which is, of course, closed-source, but very programmer-friendly. Darwin is definitely more open than that.

Sure, there must be ulterior motives for the 'openness', but right now it's pretty convenient, and sure as hell beats programming for Windows. I mean, how much of Windows' kernel source would someone like me get to see without shelling out some serious cash?

Re:Apple has been pissing me off

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine the BSD developers get annoyed that you don't know the difference between a kernel and userland.

OSX uses Mach as its kernel (sort of), BSD as the source of much of its userland and some libraries, and a ton of proprietary code.

Re:Sorry, but...

[NadNad]

Fink was actually custom written on and for OS X by...well, by the authors of Fink. OpenDarwin is an entirely unrelated project.

Don't fret.

[gklinger]

I started out using Fink [sourceforge.net] but it never felt quite right. Then I tried DarwinPorts and I've been happy ever since. As a result, when I saw this story my first thought was, "What will happen to DarinPorts?" I checked the Darwinports Mailing List Archive [opendarwin.org] and found this [opendarwin.org] comforting post. To summarize, DarwinPorts is alive and well and will continue. Time to start using www.darwinports.org [darwinports.org] rather than www.opendarwin.org.

Re:.... Apple is NOT open-source, by any means.

[EelcoV]

Well, I don't really get how much "open source" there is in Apple's effort.

Apart from the kernel itself, you mean?

• samba, for filesharing with Windows computers. Quite essential.
• printing, with cups.
• apache and php, for web serving.
• postfix, your email MTA.
• lots and lots of Gnu software (just about all lower-level software development tools are Gnu).

On the Server version of OS X there will be many more.

I think that if you removed all open source software from OS X and rebooted, your machine would not make it to the login display.

now is the time...

[Anonymous Coward]

to switch to GNU Darwin (http://www.gnu-darwin.org/)
I haven't used it myself, but it seems to be more of a full system (with GNOME and WindowMaker) and more actively developed than OpenDarwin ever was.

Re:.... Apple is NOT open-source, by any means.

[I'm Don Giovanni]

You're correct that that which makes OSX OSX is closed source, but it's not just the GUI. The whole Cocoa and Carbon API is closed. It's like Microsoft opensourcing the NT kernel and keeping Win32, DirectX, COM, .NET*, etc closed. It's fairly meaningless. OSX is "proprietary", period.

* The CLR part of .NET is open as the Rotor code; I refer to the closed parts of .NET (WinForms, WinFX, etc).

example: OsiriX

[Anonymous Coward]

> I mean, what Mac apps would you want to run on Linux that you can't find a windows version to run on Wine or some windows emulator.

OsiriX Medical Imaging Software: http://homepage.mac.com/rossetantoine/osirix/ [mac.com]

The code is written for MacOS X, using Cocoa I think. It is free software (GPL), but requires proprietary libraries to work.

On the converse side, frhed, a great free (GPLed) Windows hexeditor could simply not run on Linux/BSD if it weren't for the existence of a free compatability layer (wine/winelib).

Yes, Linux/BSD needs GNUStep to become a better compatability layer for OS X apps, if only for source compatability with the GPLed/etc OS X applications that exist. Yes, re-implementation is important for Linux/BSD - witness GNU Classpath and all that free java, witness osflash.org, witness wine/winelib, witness octave (matlab thing). Free sofware/open source *cannot* afford to ignore proprietary APIs and to some extent ABIs (mainly to bring people closer to Linux/BSD).

For those who want to pay for MacOS X, there is always Mac-On-Linux, but obviously that still ties you to non-free software (as well as Linux).

Re:Apple has been pissing me off

[BrianCarlstrom]

As the other reply said, Apple does not take anything from the BSD kernel, they take stuff from the BSD userland as well as the GNU project, amongst others.

The Mac OS X kernel is based on the Mach "microkernel", which itself used to rely on BSD code to fill in the gaps to make a fully functional Unix-like operating system. The Mach system is a direct decendant of what NeXT ran on its computers and came to Apple through the NeXT acquisition.

Re:BSD's fault.

[PCM2]

These licenses [X11, BSD, MIT] don't do enough to protect the contributions of the people that made the code -- they essentially enable legalized plagiarism.

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?

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.

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.

Fink is not out of Date!

[alistair]

Fink mirrors the Debian release cycle so you have stable packages whiich are generally a few versions behind current and unstable (which I have always fount to be stable) which are generally bleeding edge. The unstable release of Ruby is 1.8.4 which is current.

To configure Fink to use unstable, edit /sw/etc/fink.conf, add unstable/main and unstable/crypto to the Trees: line, and then run fink selfupdate; fink index; fink scanpackages.

You should now find you have more than 5000 packaes instead of 1800 to choose from and the latest version oof PERL, Ruby, KDE etc. are all there. You will have to update all your old packages to use them though, with Fink you can either choose stable or unstable, not a mixture. Having said that I have over 1000 unstable Fink packages installed on this mac aand they work fine.

Happy finking.

You're mistaken, Apple does release tons of code

[LKM]

To me open-source means that you have to release the source one way or another, and Apple doesn't release any piece of source code.

Uhm... You're mistaken [apple.com]. Some of Apple's open-sourced code:

• Darwin
• Darwin Streaming Server
• Bonjour
• WebKit
• Compiler Tools
• HeaderDoc
• OpenDirectory
• OpenPlay

And of course, there's more, in addition to all the other existing open source components which they use and contribute to.

There's even more which they don't release, and you can like that or not (it's a business decision to them), but you can't claim that they don't release code.

pkgsrc

[LizardKing]

The pkgsrc project www.pkgsrc.org [pkgsrc.org] supports Mac OS X. The packages it contains are much more up to date than either Fink or DarwinPorts, and can also be used on a number of other Unix like operating systems. I bought a Mac at the beginning of the year, and intended to wipe the disk to install NetBSD. I ended up dual booting it because I found I liked Mac OS X so much, especially when I can use pkgsrc on it.

Re:pkgsrc

[LizardKing]

Yes, it does require a case sensitive filesystem. I have to admit being slightly bemused that Apple had gone down the same braindead route as Microsoft in this respect - having a case aware but case insensitive filesystem. NeXTstep used a "normal" case-sensitive Unix filesystem, so I can't understand why they switched bahaviour instead of adding the extra metadata and fork support to UFS.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Sad

[Eivind Eklund]

The GPL is not a requirement for something being classed as free software; there's numerous other licenses. I personally work with the BSD class of licenses mostly because I see GPL as unfree.

Eivind.

Re:Sad

[bill_mcgonigle]

Apple was also a contributor to the SSA [gnu.org] project for GCC, which I believe improves all frontends. IIRC, their interest was in using the SSA tree for autovectorization work.

So (and somebody correct me if I'm wrong), if you're using gcc to compile c++ on linux, you're using Apple code.

Re:Sad

[dominator]

Speaking of history lessons and facts, let's not forget that RMS needed to due everything short of suing NeXt to open the Objective C compiler's and runtime's sources:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/pragmatic.html [fsf.org]

NeXt didn't want to contribute their code back to the Free Software movement. They even had some sneaky attempts (shipping just the .o files) to keep it proprietary. Only when lawyers got involved, did NeXt release their changes. They gave something back to the gcc community only when a gun was to their head.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame the comment was about NeXT when they were NeXT, not Apple.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Sorry, but...

[shawnce]

Darwin was made available by Apple... basically to address licensing requirements of source that they used and to provide Apple source to external parties to help in their development work on KEXT, etc. It was never meant, from Apple's point of view, to be a alternate "free" operating system distribution but they did allow for that possibility (via licensing and refinements of that license) but they never really had strong plans to spend a lot of resources on making such a thing happen.

OpenDarwin was started as a result of dreams of a handful of Apple employees and external individuals to see if they could build a more vibrant community, one that would lead to a distribution while also acting as a source of fixes and improvements from external parties. Apple helped to get it going, likely to see what would happen but they never had strong plans to change how they did things internally to make life easier for OpenDarwin folks (for one Apple has a strong desire to keep future products/capabilities secret so as a result they had to be selective on when and how they release source outside the company).

The reality is they had what they needed to build a community and a small one started but never really matured into anything. Lots of folks took with little give to the community effort. It would have been interesting to see it grow into something more (like WebKit appears to be doing now) but the main issue was trying to take something beyond what Apple really had envisioned... hard to do that without a stronger community.

Re:Bug Reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

How could this be made easier?

http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/index.html [apple.com]