OpenDarwin shutting down

Isn't this really about Intel? Apple doesn't want to see OS X on PC's. And they can't release Darwin as open source because people could use it to run OS X on those PC's.

I still think Apple should make OS X available to the PC world. I don't see it hurting existing sales. Sure, it might hurt potential sales but you never would know if those people would have bought an Apple computer anyway. But most current Apple users love their hardware and wouldn't drop it for a Dell anyway.

Before everyone goes and throws stones at Apple, please note that the announcement also cites "a lack of interest from the community" as a contributing factor. It's not as if the project was thriving until Apple squashed it by being uncooperative.

OpenDarwin was a community effort to enhance Apple's Darwin OS. OpenDarwin failed to pick up steam. Apple will still be releasing Darwin, along with source, for the forseeable future.

This has no bearing on Apple's commitment to open source.

http://www.opendarwin.org is not part of http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/

Chris Martin,

It appears that DarwinPorts will continue (thank goodness). See here:

http://opendarwin.org/pipermail/darwinports/2006-July/034946.html

The OpenDarwin project rather missed the point. Darwin isn't Linux: it's not meant to be a stand-alone OS like Linux or the BSDs. It's open-sourced to make life a bit easier for OS X developers.

-jcr

How about DarwinPorts? That's the project who's fate I am the most interested in.

That means that webkit and darwine are shuting down too?

Tim, you're right. This doesn't mean the end of open source on the Mac, but taken with other developments it is a little worrying. Here's hope Steve explains it all away at WWDC.

One thing that should be noted is that this doesn't signal the end of OSS on the Mac or any major drop of support for it. I think number of people actually hacking away at their OS X kernel is small. Frankly, I could give a crap about people wanting to contribute source to the OS X kernel. It's a pain to do because no one else depends on on the kernel besides Apple and it's a waste of Apple's effort to have to manage incoming patches along with the stuff they want to do that needs to be kept secret. WebKit would be the opposite case because it's the rendering engine for KDE's browser and it's something they can throw secret things into (like RSS support) without exposing it via open source.

There's also the theory that they're switching kernels, although that would probably be a pain unless they've developed a good driver compatibility layer for older drivers they can't get updates for. In that case, they're closing Open Darwin simply because they're not going to use the same kernel anymore.

The other, more important projects, like WebKit, DarwinPorts, and Darwine, are all still very much alive. I'm actually posting this in WebKit (which is one kick ass upgrade, by the way), and get a few build updates daily. I've got no reason to use a modified kernel, but every reason to upgrade my browser to the latest source. So, I'm not glad to see OpenDarwin go, but I'm also not distraught.

This is a shame and speaks volumes about Apple's commitment to OSS. A cynic might suggest that Apple used Open Source to provide them with a ready made base so they could spend all the development time on eye-candy. Oh wait, that's exactly what happened.