Cloning Mac OS X

Hmm...

I am not sure about the Mac OS X but it is based on the Unix source code is it not?

Why then is it not open sourced?

Mac OS X is "based" on Darwin which is free. It's only the foundation for the system and it's key components, but the OS X as a whole still isn't free software.

EDIT: Here is a page with more information:

Apple Darwin

Darwin is licenced as BSD which makes it possible for Apple to take the code, modify on it and release the outcoming product as proprietary.

You can't get Mac OS X until you buy their computer and it costs alot. Making a free clone of it as a free as in freedom operating system available for all would provide a great Mac OS X look-alike alternative to GNU/Linux and even more as it can freely grow and evolve as gnu/linux does today.

Besides, that could "force" Apple to completely free (open source) the Mac OS. ;-)

Thanks
Daniel

Oh...

I was wondering why Mac OS can steal Open Source codes...

Apple didn't steal anything. This is one of the big debates that has swirled around the BSDs for years when compared to "Free Software" and what some think of as "Open Source" though, but that debate really isn't what is important here.

Apple took code that was released under the BSD license and reworked it into the base of their system. Now the base of their system is open and free, Darwin. But there is a lot of proprietary technology sitting on top of that free and open base. Darwin is completely free but the higher level system components remain proprietary and closed. That actually is one of the beauties of Apple's move to a Unix based OS is that they can focus on developing their proprietary technology which runs on top of the underlying open platform and have absolutely no licensing trouble.

HOWEVER, as I mentioned originally there is a debate that has raged related to BSD licensed code. Apple could have gobbled up the BSD licensed code and rolled a completely proprietary system and simply acknowledged that they had used the BSD licensed code. And they COULD have done that because the BSD license does not require derivative works and modifcations to also be licensed like the original, only that the original's authors be acknowledged. This is one of the percieved "weaknesses" of the BSD license in that code can flow freely from BSD license to proprietary licenses; some say this is more free than not allowing it, but for this reason I use the Sleepycat license as a good BSD derivative that requires that derivatives and public modifications have the source made available.

I'd like to see Apple Open Source everything, but that is very unlikely seeing as how they have the coolest tricks and no one else quite knows how to do what they do.

I want to come back to the original topic of this thread:

I was actually talking about this about an hour ago with a coworker as we drove to CompUSA to get some Bawls to aid our studying we have to do for finals this Thursday. The thing that struck me is that there is no lack of talent in the FOSS community but I think we may have some encumbering issues. I am not speaking as an expert but only from what I vaguely know about Unix GUIs.

The problem I see is that Gnome, KDE, and all the rest of our Window Managers/GUI Frameworks are sitting on top of a very old sytem, X Windows. If my memory serves X Windows was designed for a network environment. X Windows is built using a Client-Server model that allows an X Server to run on one machine while the actual client could be running on another which amounts to a design optimized for network, multi-server GUI management. This however presents some limitations, the Video drivers are running within the Client framework and thus features that are normally integrated into systems like OS X at a very low level in the GUI architecture are actually being implemented much higher.

What I am trying to get at is that in order to se real GUI innovation we as a FOSS community may need to rethink our reliance on X Windows. Maybe a completely new framework designed specifically for desktop use is needed since the bells and whistles we would all like are really only useful in an individual desktop context. I have some doubts, although not based on any specific knowledge, that we coudl ever achieve the tight, clean, jawdropping GUI goodness of a system like OS X without rethinking the most basic of our GUI frameworks, namely our reliance on X Windows.

Well said James.. i very much agree with you.

Even though i don't consider myself an expert in these things either, X Windowing system is indeed very old. They do have new recent releases, but if it was originally a system made for a bit different purpose it doesn't sound like the best GUI-powering option we could have.

Thus, i am all for producing an alternative. Will it happen? It probably will if enough of the community expresses the need.

The expressed need of a big part of a community is what drives existing projects forward and creation of new ones, such may be a new GUI foundation.

So, what we need is to bring this issue to the communities attention, spur the interest which may eventually lead to some concrete projects. Discussing these issues in forums like these is a good start.

Thank you
Daniel

Another possibility, still not speaking as an expert, would be to examine the possibility of forking the X Windows system. Of course this recently happened in regards to X.org over licensing issues but what about an internal X.org fork, still based on the same code lineage but with the express goal of tightening the codebase and eliminating the client-server model while trying to maintain backwards compatibility as much as possible. A fresh start might still be the best thing in the long run but the feasibility of all options should be discussed and worked through.

There are many alternatives to X windows. They all are better than X at some points, and worse than X on other points. It seems X is a good compromise between flexibility, performance and ease of programming.
Switching to another GUI component would either require porting all those libraries like gtk, qt, athena, etc etc to the new one, which would take away much of the performance gain that systems with builtin widget sets (such as Y windows) have, or it would require porting all those applications, which is even more work.
I guess we're stuck with X like we're stuck with x86 processors: inferior, but there are a hell of a lot of applications for it. To get widely used, a GUI component would need to be able to emulate X so that old applications and libraries can be used with it. This works very well: on QNX I use Photon instead of X, and to run X programs I use XPhoton, a X server that seamlessly integrates into Photon. AFAIK almost noone who uses QNX uses the real X server. Just too bad Photon and XPhoton are not open source.

Making a clone of MacOS X might get you in trouble. Apparently apple has copyright on the aqua look. I don't know if this is still true, but mozilla.org used to refuse aqua themes for mozilla because of these copyright matters.
Anyway, why would we want to clone MacOS X? We can make something that is even better!

Maybe the idea of cloning OS X isn't such a great idea, but it would be silly to not take cues from, in my opinion, one of the most intuitive GUIs around.

X Windows is a great platform and has served the community well but if innovation is the goal of Linux Desktop developers it might be worth rethinking our present reliance on X. It would definitely not be easy to move away but if the benefits are good enough, it might not be a bad idea. Anyways it's something to think about anyways if we're interested in innovating in this area as a community.

I agree. There are multiple choices in many other areas (KDE vs GNOME vs alternatives, RPM vs Apt-get vs Portage and so on). It would be great to have an alternative to X as the GUI foundation, be it a completely new thing or a fork.

Forking can still lead to a great thing. For example, there has been alot of forking in FOSS CMS area, especially when it comes to phpnuke and most of those forks are considered as much better, reliable, secure etc. If there was always just the phpnuke where would we be now. The system used on this site is actually a fork of postnuke which is a fork of phpnuke and i still consider it to be much better than both.

And of course, taking advantage of some known ideas of OS X GUI is a good way to go to desktop.

Thank you
Daniel