Clarification: Apple has not closed the Intel-based Darwin kernel

OSNews is reporting that Ernest Prabhakar, Apple's Open Source and Open Standards product manager, has stated in the Fed-Talk mailing that Apple has not actually closed Mac OS X's Darwin kernel for the Intel version of the OS; they simply haven't released it yet. Speculation about Apple closing the kernel arose from the fact that other non-kernel Darwin sources actually have been released, and the previous PowerPC-based kernel is still available as open source as well.

Ernest wanted to make sure that tech media didn't confuse 'speculation' with 'fact'. A good lesson we all could benefit from.

View Tags

Source: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14668

Categories

OS Open Source UNIX / BSD

OSNews is reporting that Ernest Prabhakar, Apple's Open Source and Open Standards product manager, has stated in the Fed-Talk mailing that...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

5 Comments

Filter by:

Alistair McMillan

The "PPC" Darwin kernel source compiles and runs fine on x86 machines.

http://opendarwin.org/pipermail/darwinbuild/2006-February/000278.html

Nothing has changed here. Try it for yourself or check the diffs.

May 22 2006 at 3:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jordan

It's closed until it's open.

May 22 2006 at 12:58 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ikzann

Non-digging link:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Fed-talk/2006/May/msg00105.html

May 21 2006 at 8:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sam

Clarification to the clarification: Apple refuses to say whether or not they've closed-source the Intel Xnu kernel. If you read his statement, they haven't confirmed or denied anything, just called the current opinions on the matter "speculation". Which is true. But after 6 months of no source, it's certainly not a technical problem with getting the source to the site-- there has to be a policy decision somewhere that we're not hearing about.

May 21 2006 at 8:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

John Muir

Learn something? ... Us? Yeah, good one!

May 21 2006 at 6:45 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply