4 ms·

XNU is not FOSS, and 99% of the foundation classes, Aqua, and drivers are all proprietary.

doctor_eval 6y ago
Why is XNU not FOSS? Has something changed? Is Wikipedia wrong? It says that XNU is APSL which is approved by OSI and FSF. While I agree that much of the good stuff is proprietary (but certainly not all, eg WebKit), that doesn’t mean that the free stuff isn’t free. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Public_Source_License https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Public_Source_License
- toyg 6y ago
  Webkit was likely "saved" by the original KHTML license being GPL. At the time, Apple were wise enough (or desperate enough) to figure that they could work with such a license, although they were eventually careful to chisel out anything they could into BSD-licensed modules. And still they had to be dragged into the light more or less kicking and screaming (e.g. they had no public VSC until KDE people kicked up a stink in the press, and were just throwing huge swaths of code "over the fence" like they still do with XNU).
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    KHTML is LGPL, isn’t it?
    - toyg 6y ago
      If i remember correctly KDE used to be GPL when webkit started, and was later relicensed. The difference is relatively irrelevant anyway, the way they used KHTML they would have had to release sources even under LGPL. Had KDE used BSD, MIT, or Apache, back then, we likely wouldn't have had webkit.
      - robin_reala 6y ago
        I’m trying to find a specific commit to disprove this, but that’s not my recollection. Certainly this blog post from 2005 indicates LGPL: https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1001 https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedev...
        toyg 6y ago
        You might be right. Still, it shows the Apple attitude at the time, and how the license helped changing their ways. Note how the post complains they are simply using OSX apis... without the modification-release clauses, webkit as a reusable library would never have happened.
- Someone 6y ago
  Indeed. Git repo at https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu. Note that that is 2 years behind. You can get a newer source dump from https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-6153.141.1/ https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-6153.141.1/. So, open source, but development isn’t done in the open. You can’t really expect you’ll be able to see recent commit messages or even just regular source dumps.
  - spacedcowboy 6y ago
    The development methodology has nothing to do with whether something is FOSS or not. If you're complaining that you want to see daily updates, that's a completely different thing than claiming it's not FOSS (as OP did).
    - lmm 6y ago
      FOSS means being able to develop it the same way they do. That ought to mean being able to see to VCS history, bug trackers and so on - their own developers would use those things when developing.
      - robin_reala 6y ago
        It really doesn’t mean that. Neither Stallman’s four freedoms[1] nor Peren’s Open Source Definition[2] have anything to say about code history, bug trackers, development standards etc etc, and they’re the only commonly accepted definitions for what free and open source software is. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en [2] https://opensource.org/docs/osd https://opensource.org/docs/osd
        lmm 6y ago
        > The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. > In order for freedoms 1 and 3 (the freedom to make changes and the freedom to publish the changed versions) to be meaningful, you need to have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software. Obfuscated “source code” is not real source code and does not count as source code. IMO exactly the same logic applies to code history and bug trackers: you need access to those things to be able to study how the program works. A code dump is much the same thing as obfuscated source code: you can build the program from it, but you can't understand the program from it.

Why is XNU not FOSS? Has something changed? Is Wikipedia wrong? It says that XNU is APSL which is approved by OSI and FSF. While I agree that much of the good stuff is proprietary (but certainly not all, eg WebKit), that doesn’t mean that the free stuff isn’t free. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Public_Source_License https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Public_Source_License

toyg 6y ago
Webkit was likely "saved" by the original KHTML license being GPL. At the time, Apple were wise enough (or desperate enough) to figure that they could work with such a license, although they were eventually careful to chisel out anything they could into BSD-licensed modules. And still they had to be dragged into the light more or less kicking and screaming (e.g. they had no public VSC until KDE people kicked up a stink in the press, and were just throwing huge swaths of code "over the fence" like they still do with XNU).
- saagarjha 6y ago
  KHTML is LGPL, isn’t it?
  - toyg 6y ago
    If i remember correctly KDE used to be GPL when webkit started, and was later relicensed. The difference is relatively irrelevant anyway, the way they used KHTML they would have had to release sources even under LGPL. Had KDE used BSD, MIT, or Apache, back then, we likely wouldn't have had webkit.
    - robin_reala 6y ago
      I’m trying to find a specific commit to disprove this, but that’s not my recollection. Certainly this blog post from 2005 indicates LGPL: https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1001 https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedev...
      - toyg 6y ago
        You might be right. Still, it shows the Apple attitude at the time, and how the license helped changing their ways. Note how the post complains they are simply using OSX apis... without the modification-release clauses, webkit as a reusable library would never have happened.
Someone 6y ago
Indeed. Git repo at https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu. Note that that is 2 years behind. You can get a newer source dump from https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-6153.141.1/ https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-6153.141.1/. So, open source, but development isn’t done in the open. You can’t really expect you’ll be able to see recent commit messages or even just regular source dumps.
- spacedcowboy 6y ago
  The development methodology has nothing to do with whether something is FOSS or not. If you're complaining that you want to see daily updates, that's a completely different thing than claiming it's not FOSS (as OP did).
  - lmm 6y ago
    FOSS means being able to develop it the same way they do. That ought to mean being able to see to VCS history, bug trackers and so on - their own developers would use those things when developing.
    - robin_reala 6y ago
      It really doesn’t mean that. Neither Stallman’s four freedoms[1] nor Peren’s Open Source Definition[2] have anything to say about code history, bug trackers, development standards etc etc, and they’re the only commonly accepted definitions for what free and open source software is. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en [2] https://opensource.org/docs/osd https://opensource.org/docs/osd
      - lmm 6y ago
        > The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. > In order for freedoms 1 and 3 (the freedom to make changes and the freedom to publish the changed versions) to be meaningful, you need to have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software. Obfuscated “source code” is not real source code and does not count as source code. IMO exactly the same logic applies to code history and bug trackers: you need access to those things to be able to study how the program works. A code dump is much the same thing as obfuscated source code: you can build the program from it, but you can't understand the program from it.