PureDarwin – Darwin-based open source OS

https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin

by xvilka • 6 years ago

189 93 6 years ago

github.com

popped3• 6 years ago

Can someone explain what the motivation is behind running Darwin?

lewisinc• 6 years ago

Continuous integration servers that aren't run on genuine Apple hardware?

nightowl_games• 6 years ago

Using this for that would probably break terms of service just as much as a hackintosh would.

tannhaeuser• 6 years ago

One can hope this will become eventually possible, but with the pace of PureDarwin as it is, I doubt it will before Apple migrates to ARM with custom instruction set additions.

saagarjha• 6 years ago

Perhaps if you package your code for MacPorts.

perardi• 6 years ago

Wouldn't you have to reverse-engineer and implement a LOT of closed-source APIs and libraries to get a full iOS toolchain going?

devenblake• 6 years ago

As with many (maybe even most) computing projects, for the hell of it.[1]

[1] https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin/wiki/About#why-spen...

popped3• 6 years ago

Amen

dschuetz• 6 years ago

It seems that they do it for fun and giggles, but all the users are interested in, ultimately, is "Can it run macOS software? No? Stop wasting my time."

zymhan• 6 years ago

Well it can run macports!

ytch• 6 years ago

For fun and research

kebman• 6 years ago

Can we assume that the 'research' part will be of particular value to Apple, or am I wrong here?

popped3• 6 years ago

I'm struggling to understand HN these days. This is being downvoted, and IMHO is the key question to ask the folk putting in the effort.

Would love a downvoter to give a hint...

hideout_berlin4• 6 years ago

just because it doesn't suit you it doesn't have to be done badly a little understanding for other projects thank you lg from berlin

oscargrouch2• 6 years ago

Not a downvoter but you have reached into one of those unwritten rules:

You shall not criticize Apple, Rust and Elon Musk.

HN is super cool for any other topics, except when there's some sort of tech cult involved in it.

dang3• 6 years ago

The biggest factor is randomness, which can't be understood in that way. People frequently imagine stories about why HN is "doing" this or that, but that's a category error, since HN is a statistical cloud. Randomness plus cognitive bias equals narrative, etc.

You'll notice that your GP comment is now upvoted while this one is downvoted. That's common, because unfairly downvoted comments frequently get corrective upvotes from users who come along and see that the comment is fine: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Meanwhile, complaints like this one break the site guidelines (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html at the bottom!) and usually end up being false as well.

shivekkhurana• 6 years ago

Can it run software packaged for macOS ?

65536• 6 years ago

The graphical user interface components of macOS are proprietary software, as are a bunch of other libraries included in macOS that software packaged for macOS is likely to use.

So if this was a goal of PureDarwin then they’d have a lot of work ahead of them in order to implement those APIs.

This wiki page on the repository seems to indicate that they are not intending to do that:

https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin/wiki/Graphics

While Darwin is the operating system underlying Mac OS X, the graphical environments of PureDarwin and Mac OS X are very different. This is because most graphical aspects of Mac OS X (especially Quartz and Aqua) are proprietary, closed-source software and are not available for PureDarwin. Hence, PureDarwin uses a more traditional UNIX-like graphics system (X server), waiting a better alternative.

zeckalpha2• 6 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUstep may help with some of this, but it is hard to keep up with a moving target.

hideout_berlin4• 6 years ago

clear! depends on which

adamretter• 6 years ago

I would be interested to know if it might be possible to eventually install XCode Command Line Tools or similar, and then use it to sign DMG packages?

At the moment having to keep a Mac solely for the purposes of signing software packages is very frustrating.

em5002• 6 years ago

Is there any reason for this submission at this time? This project hast been dormant/stagnant for years.

Note the "stay tuned" message for a working bootabable image from Jan 2018: https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin/issues/35

oefrha2• 6 years ago

Jan 2020, not 2018. And commit history indicates quite a bit of activity.

em5002• 6 years ago

Ok, I read that particular thread a bit more carefully:

2017-11-21: mcandre: "Release a working ISO ASAP"

2018-06-08: csekel: "We will be releasing ISO shortly. Thanks"

2020-01-18: piranna: "Any updates on this? It was one and a half years since it was anounced the ISO "soon"..."

2020-01-18: hideout: "yes we are on this .... stay tuned!"

(hideout's last public commit to any darwin related repo dates from 2019-10-14)

I was just surprised to see this on the front page today, since it doesn't look like anything substantial has changed. Maybe something I missed?

moonchild• 6 years ago

That is jan 18th, of this year.

xvilka2• 6 years ago

Because I answered to a comment[1] about Linux on top of Mach microkernel, and then searched HN - no particular mentions for a while. This is why I decided to submit it :)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23796503

fluffy87• 6 years ago

launchd is cancer - is like systemd but designed for no user to use it

mjg593• 6 years ago

From a pedantic point of view, it's not open source - the XNU license has an additional restriction on top of the Apple Public Source License:

"The rights granted to you under the License may not be used to create, or enable the creation or redistribution of, unlawful or unlicensed copies of an Apple operating system, or to circumvent, violate, or enable the circumvention or violation of, any terms of an Apple operating system software license agreement."

which is a violation of term 7 of the open source definition.

viraptor• 6 years ago

That clause is really weird. IANAL (maybe it has specific meaning in law), but why is it even included as a clause rather than some comment / reminder saying that the licence doesn't make otherwise illegal things legal?

In practice nothing would change if they skipped it, right?

PHPApple• 6 years ago

It is likely in relation to running macOS on non apple hardware, as the Darwin kernel is often distributed with hackintosh tools. This would give them a reason to send a cease and desist otherwise legal software.

edit: wording

aidenn0• 6 years ago

I'm also NAL, but circumvention is not always illegal, nor is running a legally purchased copy of OS X on non-apple hardware (or at least that was true when OS X was distributed on physical media, which is also when that clause was written).

mjg593• 6 years ago

Not all jurisdictions forbid what that clause forbids, and even in some jurisdictions where it would normally be forbidden there may be circumstances under which you're permitted to do so, so it's definitely intended to forbid you from doing things that would otherwise be legal.

c3534l• 6 years ago

If we're being pedantic, the Open Source Definition can't actually define what is and isn't open source, they can only say what is allowed their trademark certification. It's like if a there was a food label "natural" that got to put an N on their package if they met some conditions. They can tell you what is allowed to have the trademark on it, but they can't tell you what natural is because they're more of a brand than a dictionary.

In my opinion, which is not based on promoting open-source or protecting a brand, open-source means literally the source code is open to anyone to view. Open-source is like a book that can be opened to look inside. Most of the open source initiatives have little to do with whether or not the source code is open and everything to do with what they want to promote in open-source. Their criteria doesn't even make the free as freedom versus free as in beer distinction.

In short, the Open Source Definition, despite it's name, does not actually define open source.

phoe-krk2• 6 years ago

open-source means literally the source code is open to anyone to view

You mean the term "source available", which has been a well-defined term for years as well.

mjg593• 6 years ago

You're right that the Open Source Definition doesn't define the term "open source" - usage does. But common usage of "open source" still means "something that meets the open source definition", not "I can see the source code". There are some people who use a different definition, but it's a long way from being well accepted.

chris_wot• 6 years ago

It’s not open if it is read only. It’s only open if you can read and modify the source.

cxr4• 6 years ago

People show up with their superficially plausible arguments like this one to try and retcon what "open source" means, but there are a few pesky problems.

Open-source is like a book that can be opened to look inside.

Except every single book that has ever existed also has that property, and you're definitely not calling them "open source". If you did tell someone that a book is "open source" they'd understand you to be saying something else entirely other than that you can look at it.

Sometimes prescriptivism has its merits. The case of "open source" is one of them.

NineStarPoint• 6 years ago

It’s not quite like natural, natural is a word that would predate any comoany trying to take it for their own ends. “Open Source” as a terminology was coined in 1998 by a group of people, and the OSI was formed by one of those people that same year to help define what the term would mean and encourage industry adoption. An entity that has existed as long as the term has and helped shape it’s perception to programmers is a bit different than an entity coopting a term that had prior use.

Regardless, I’ve always understood Open Source to also mean open to use, extension, and repackaging myself. The exact definition indeed doesn’t have to be owned by the OSI, but their guideline are a pretty good approximation of what I would expect code to do to be truly open source.

gvjddbnvdrbv5• 6 years ago

Open source has a common and well understood definition. Your definition and opinion won't change that. You may however cause confusion if you misuse the term.

Brian_K_White3• 6 years ago

Why is it at all interesting that you define open as merely viewable, while other people define open as also being usable? I see no pedantic correction here, merely an opinion on what one individual personally cares about. IE, you think visibilty is the important part. OK good for you. So what? That does not define open or correct any other definition of open.

Zarel• 6 years ago

Even if you ignore the subthread of whether or not the OSI coined the term "open source" or if it was previously used, I think it's valid to standardize terms.

Imagine everyone had browsers with slightly different ideas of what HTML was, and then the W3C comes along and says "we're going to standardize on HTML meaning this", and then, 20 years later, I think it's valid to say "this isn't valid HTML" to mean "this HTML doesn't conform to the W3C's standard".

Or, to pick a different example, just because the word "planet" has been used for thousands of years with varying definitions doesn't mean that it's wrong for me to say "Pluto isn't a planet" rather than "Pluto isn't a planet™ as defined by the IAU".

I think if a word is previously vague and unclear, and then a standards body steps in and defines the edge cases, and everyone uses their definition of the word for decades, I think that's good enough to use that definition for everyone going forward. You might have had an argument 20 years ago when the word was newly standardized, but it's too late now; just pick a new word like "source available".

_def• 6 years ago

"Open Source" versus FOSS

hvs• 6 years ago

For the first few years of the 2000's, Apple actually supported a similar project called OpenDarwin. It was basically the open source components of MacOS. I ran it for a bit, but there wasn't much community support for it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060804104416/http://opendarwin...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)#Open...

x3haloed• 6 years ago

That's too bad that community support was lacking. Things might be different now?

brockrockman• 6 years ago

NextBSD ("FreeBSD X") operates in a similar space and was also looking promising, but it looks like development stopped.

In that approach, the BSD kernel was extended to support some Mach syscalls and libdispatch, launchd, and a few other userspace macOS-isms stuck around too.

Slides + Video: https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/3iikry/slides_next...

There was also an effort some time ago to get opensource Darwin compiled and booted on ARM development boards:

https://github.com/darwin-on-arm

InSaneDarwin-PD4• 6 years ago

Would anyone actually like to help work on the project? I am one of the Dev's actively working on it. We could use the help, project was slow as I was working on my degree. Reply here and I will contact anyone who would like to join our efforts in making a difference on the Project.

InSaneDarwin-PD4• 6 years ago

https://youtu.be/3p4dDQWu2hQ

InSaneDarwin-PD4• 6 years ago

https://youtu.be/3p4dDQWu2hQ

PureDarwin – Darwin-based open source OS

Related Stories