6 ms·

I'm curious why Apple doesn't support this effort: they have done a lot of the work and it won't exactly harm their market share.

by mikece 10mo ago

OsrsNeedsf2P 10mo ago
I still remember when MacOS being based on BSD had the community excited about the future
- bluGill 10mo ago
  MacOS was never based on BSD. Apple developed the USB drivers for BSP so they could copy it into their OS, but that very different from based on BSD. (It is likely some other parts are copied as well)
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - reactordev 10mo ago
    MacOS was absolutely derived from BSD through NeXTSTEP.
    - bluGill 10mo ago
      Large parts have been rewritten: they very different and don't show any BSD heritage.
      - reactordev 10mo ago
        That may be true but a large core of it is still BSD. In fact, it’s so BSD that one could create a BSD distro based off FreeBSD and achieve binary compatibility on x86. Which is exactly what RavynOS [0] has done. There’s a lot of BSD under the hood of macOS still today in Darwin. A mix of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. [0] https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos
    - AdieuToLogic 10mo ago
      > MacOS was absolutely derived from BSD through NeXTSTEP. The OS-X (now branded as "macOS") kernel was not, and is not, a derivative of the FreeBSD kernel, or any other BSD, even though macOS/OS-X has a FreeBSD kernel component due to its Mach heritage. The userland tools are however BSD. OS-X's kernel is XNU and from the XNU GitHub repo[0]: XNU kernel is part of the Darwin operating system for use in macOS and iOS operating systems. XNU is an acronym for X is Not Unix. XNU is a hybrid kernel combining the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with components from FreeBSD and a C++ API for writing drivers called IOKit. XNU runs on x86_64 and ARM64 for both single processor and multi-processor configurations. I recommend the book "Mac OS X Internals"[1] for a detailed analysis of same. EDIT: In theory, XNU could simultaneously run the existing FreeBSD subsystem alongside Linux and/or MS-Windows ones. In practice, this would be a herculean effort fraught with difficulty. See QNX[2] for another example of a micro-kernel OS architecture. 0 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu 1 - https://books.apple.com/us/book/mac-os-x-internals/id434358349 https://books.apple.com/us/book/mac-os-x-internals/id4343583... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
      - p_ing 10mo ago
        Apple outlines the architecture here - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Architecture/Architecture.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
        reactordev 10mo ago
        >Darwin is based on proven technology from many sources. A large portion of this technology is derived from FreeBSD, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features. Other parts of the system software, such as Mach, are based on technology previously used in Apple’s MkLinux project, in OS X Server, and in technology acquired from NeXT. Exactly.
        AdieuToLogic 10mo ago
    - lukeh 10mo ago
      The first version of MacOS X Server was based on an unreleased version of NEXTSTEP which in turn used 4.4BSD and Mach 2.5. Around BBB 1997-1998 a lot of userland was synced with bits from not just FreeBSD but the other BSD distributions, if my memory serves me correctly. MacOS X moved to Mach 3. That’s a very very long time ago though, and Apple obviously did a _lot_ of their own CoreOS engineering, things like launchd and XPC don’t have FreeBSD equivalents. But hey, Darwin is open source so if someone wants to do go on a provenance archeological dig, it could be done!
- ndiddy 10mo ago
  Interesting article on the failure of Darwin as an open source project: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html
E39M5S62 10mo ago
Apple is struggling to make MacOS functional, why would they contribute engineering time to another OS?
dzogchen 10mo ago
I'm curious why you think Apple would support any effort that does not benefit their bottom line?
- justin66 10mo ago
  There's a case for it when it comes to FreeBSD specifically, since macOS uses some code from FreeBSD.
  - reactordev 10mo ago
    NeXTSTEP did but that was in the 90s. When Apple bought NeXTSTEP (and Jobs returned to the helm of Apple), they used that OS as the basis for macOS X. Due to GPL, they release the sources to the BSD code they use. Everything else is proprietary. Likewise Sony used BSD for PlayStation OS. They publish the sources to the changes to BSD they made, the rest is proprietary.
    - bitwize 10mo ago
      There's no GPL in the BSD sources used by Apple or Sony. They are free to release their operating systems as closed source; Sony does this. Apple releases Darwin sources "out of the goodness of their hearts", meaning, back in the 2000s they wanted to capture mindshare amongst the tech community for whom Linux was the strongest contender. Now that the future has refused to change, the year of the Linux desktop never materialized, and macOS has become the default developer's workstation OS, Apple has been much more sparing with Darwin source drops and may cease them altogether.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - reactordev 10mo ago
        https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/ https://opensource.apple.com/ https://opensource.apple.com/ GPL where applicable. If it's MIT or just "as is" then no, they won't but they definitely publish the sources to what they are required to. Since FreeBSD is "as is" 4.4BSD licensed, they aren't required to publish the sources of Orbis.
rjsw 10mo ago
Apple hasn't done any work that would be useful.
- Lammy 10mo ago
  Weird to see this downvoted, because it's totally true. Apple imports FreeBSD's userland periodically but not its kernel/drivers, and thus has nothing to do with how well FreeBSD works on PC hardware: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths#FreeBSD_is_Just_macOS_Without_the_Good_Bits https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths#FreeBSD_is_Just_macOS_Without...
  - AdieuToLogic 10mo ago
    > Apple imports FreeBSD's userland periodically but not its kernel/drivers ... OS-X/macOS runs an entirely different kernel called XNU[0][1], which is why userland tools can be imported whereas FreeBSD kernel and device driver code cannot. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU 1 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu
- bluGill 10mo ago
  Any is a bit too strong. Apple has does (and still does) some useful work with clang/llvm, and a few other tools that BSDs use. However this is indirect at best.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
xp84 10mo ago
I would expect if anyone even considered it, they’d immediately reject the idea, as they clearly believe that Apple retains ownership of the computers they “sell” and should control the software you could run on them.
wpm 10mo ago
Users buying Macs to put BSD on them are less likely to buy things in the Mac App Store.
jandrese 10mo ago
Apple's attitude towards other OSes running on their hardware is less "supportive" and more "barely tolerates". Also as a general rule Apple doesn't contribute much to open source outside of some high profile projects like Swift and Webkit.
- LeFantome 10mo ago
  As somebody using a Linux distro compiled with Clang, I consider the work on LLVM to be Apple’s greatest contribution to Open Source. I have seen others say that CUPS is. And there is libdispatch, mdns, etc. Anyway, they contribute more than you think.
reactordev 10mo ago
Apple publishes the sources to the GPL BSD code they have to but that’s where the support ends. Apple has no interest in assisting a competing operating system.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
justinclift 10mo ago
Isn't it Apple's policy to not support OSS projects, unless they're Apple's own OSS ones? ie anything Apple didn't create/release themselves

I'm curious why Apple doesn't support this effort: they have done a lot of the work and it won't exactly harm their market share.

by mikece 10mo ago

I'm curious why Apple doesn't support this effort: they have done a lot of the work and it won't exactly harm their market share.

OsrsNeedsf2P 10mo ago

I still remember when MacOS being based on BSD had the community excited about the future

bluGill 10mo ago
MacOS was never based on BSD. Apple developed the USB drivers for BSP so they could copy it into their OS, but that very different from based on BSD. (It is likely some other parts are copied as well)
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- reactordev 10mo ago
  MacOS was absolutely derived from BSD through NeXTSTEP.
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    Large parts have been rewritten: they very different and don't show any BSD heritage.
    - reactordev 10mo ago
      That may be true but a large core of it is still BSD. In fact, it’s so BSD that one could create a BSD distro based off FreeBSD and achieve binary compatibility on x86. Which is exactly what RavynOS [0] has done. There’s a lot of BSD under the hood of macOS still today in Darwin. A mix of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. [0] https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos
  - AdieuToLogic 10mo ago
    > MacOS was absolutely derived from BSD through NeXTSTEP. The OS-X (now branded as "macOS") kernel was not, and is not, a derivative of the FreeBSD kernel, or any other BSD, even though macOS/OS-X has a FreeBSD kernel component due to its Mach heritage. The userland tools are however BSD. OS-X's kernel is XNU and from the XNU GitHub repo[0]: XNU kernel is part of the Darwin operating system for use in macOS and iOS operating systems. XNU is an acronym for X is Not Unix. XNU is a hybrid kernel combining the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with components from FreeBSD and a C++ API for writing drivers called IOKit. XNU runs on x86_64 and ARM64 for both single processor and multi-processor configurations. I recommend the book "Mac OS X Internals"[1] for a detailed analysis of same. EDIT: In theory, XNU could simultaneously run the existing FreeBSD subsystem alongside Linux and/or MS-Windows ones. In practice, this would be a herculean effort fraught with difficulty. See QNX[2] for another example of a micro-kernel OS architecture. 0 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu 1 - https://books.apple.com/us/book/mac-os-x-internals/id434358349 https://books.apple.com/us/book/mac-os-x-internals/id4343583... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
    - p_ing 10mo ago
      Apple outlines the architecture here - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Architecture/Architecture.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
      - reactordev 10mo ago
        >Darwin is based on proven technology from many sources. A large portion of this technology is derived from FreeBSD, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features. Other parts of the system software, such as Mach, are based on technology previously used in Apple’s MkLinux project, in OS X Server, and in technology acquired from NeXT. Exactly.
        AdieuToLogic 10mo ago
  - lukeh 10mo ago
    The first version of MacOS X Server was based on an unreleased version of NEXTSTEP which in turn used 4.4BSD and Mach 2.5. Around BBB 1997-1998 a lot of userland was synced with bits from not just FreeBSD but the other BSD distributions, if my memory serves me correctly. MacOS X moved to Mach 3. That’s a very very long time ago though, and Apple obviously did a _lot_ of their own CoreOS engineering, things like launchd and XPC don’t have FreeBSD equivalents. But hey, Darwin is open source so if someone wants to do go on a provenance archeological dig, it could be done!
ndiddy 10mo ago
Interesting article on the failure of Darwin as an open source project: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html

E39M5S62 10mo ago

Apple is struggling to make MacOS functional, why would they contribute engineering time to another OS?

dzogchen 10mo ago

I'm curious why you think Apple would support any effort that does not benefit their bottom line?

justin66 10mo ago
There's a case for it when it comes to FreeBSD specifically, since macOS uses some code from FreeBSD.
- reactordev 10mo ago
  NeXTSTEP did but that was in the 90s. When Apple bought NeXTSTEP (and Jobs returned to the helm of Apple), they used that OS as the basis for macOS X. Due to GPL, they release the sources to the BSD code they use. Everything else is proprietary. Likewise Sony used BSD for PlayStation OS. They publish the sources to the changes to BSD they made, the rest is proprietary.
  - bitwize 10mo ago
    There's no GPL in the BSD sources used by Apple or Sony. They are free to release their operating systems as closed source; Sony does this. Apple releases Darwin sources "out of the goodness of their hearts", meaning, back in the 2000s they wanted to capture mindshare amongst the tech community for whom Linux was the strongest contender. Now that the future has refused to change, the year of the Linux desktop never materialized, and macOS has become the default developer's workstation OS, Apple has been much more sparing with Darwin source drops and may cease them altogether.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - reactordev 10mo ago
      https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/ https://opensource.apple.com/ https://opensource.apple.com/ GPL where applicable. If it's MIT or just "as is" then no, they won't but they definitely publish the sources to what they are required to. Since FreeBSD is "as is" 4.4BSD licensed, they aren't required to publish the sources of Orbis.

rjsw 10mo ago

Apple hasn't done any work that would be useful.

Lammy 10mo ago
Weird to see this downvoted, because it's totally true. Apple imports FreeBSD's userland periodically but not its kernel/drivers, and thus has nothing to do with how well FreeBSD works on PC hardware: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths#FreeBSD_is_Just_macOS_Without_the_Good_Bits https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths#FreeBSD_is_Just_macOS_Without...
- AdieuToLogic 10mo ago
  > Apple imports FreeBSD's userland periodically but not its kernel/drivers ... OS-X/macOS runs an entirely different kernel called XNU[0][1], which is why userland tools can be imported whereas FreeBSD kernel and device driver code cannot. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU 1 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu
bluGill 10mo ago
Any is a bit too strong. Apple has does (and still does) some useful work with clang/llvm, and a few other tools that BSDs use. However this is indirect at best.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

xp84 10mo ago

I would expect if anyone even considered it, they’d immediately reject the idea, as they clearly believe that Apple retains ownership of the computers they “sell” and should control the software you could run on them.

wpm 10mo ago

Users buying Macs to put BSD on them are less likely to buy things in the Mac App Store.

jandrese 10mo ago

Apple's attitude towards other OSes running on their hardware is less "supportive" and more "barely tolerates". Also as a general rule Apple doesn't contribute much to open source outside of some high profile projects like Swift and Webkit.

LeFantome 10mo ago
As somebody using a Linux distro compiled with Clang, I consider the work on LLVM to be Apple’s greatest contribution to Open Source. I have seen others say that CUPS is. And there is libdispatch, mdns, etc. Anyway, they contribute more than you think.

reactordev 10mo ago

Apple publishes the sources to the GPL BSD code they have to but that’s where the support ends. Apple has no interest in assisting a competing operating system.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

justinclift 10mo ago

Isn't it Apple's policy to not support OSS projects, unless they're Apple's own OSS ones? ie anything Apple didn't create/release themselves