O'Reilly Network: Darwin and MacOS X

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http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/1999/darwin.html
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Date: Nov 16 1999
From: Jim Kelly
To: ask_tim@oreilly.com
Subject: Darwin and MacOS X

Tim,

What is your reaction to Apple's open-sourcing their Darwin code? Do you feel that by doing this, they'll be able to leverage the open source movement?

Jim Kelly

Jim,

I imagine that this is good for Apple Darwin developers, but I don't expect it to have much impact on the broader open source community. At this point, we don't need another free operating system, especially one that overlaps so heavily with Linux and the various BSDs.

I had this conversation with someone at Sun recently. What would the reaction be to open sourcing solaris? Probably not as big as open sourcing NFS, or the file system. A huge operating system is a lot to get your hands around. People in the existing free OS communities want some pieces that they can port to their existing *n[iu]x system, not a complete replacement. And there are some very attractive pieces in some of the commercial operating systems. Those pieces would probably be valued more highly than the OS as a whole, especially if they were packaged up in a way that made them easy to adopt on other related free OSes.

That being said, I am not really that familiar with Darwin or its license. I do know that Apple wants to do the right thing, and that's great. With their code open, it's certainly true that people can get under the hood and see what's good that might be usable elsewhere, and certainly developers on that platform will have a lot more power. But Darwin isn't going to replace BSD or Linux in the hearts and minds of developers, if that's what Apple is hoping to do. To get pride of place, they'll need to reach deeper, and contribute some leading-edge high-value technology.

I've said elsewhere that open source is like recycling, or sustainable agriculture: something companies need to do to keep the soil of innovation rich and alive. But just composting and putting good stuff back into the soil doesn't guarantee you award-winning vegetables and flowers. You need to plant the right kinds of seeds for new growth, and then nurture them to maturity.

So my question is what Apple is doing to open source the freshest and most exciting flowers in their garden. How about an open source version of iMovie, already ported to a UNIX or Linux-like system?

--Tim

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