x86 OS X Kernel Becomming Closed-Source?

[Lollypop]

I think this is the first step from apple to change the kernel, secure and update it for the intel wonders that is apparenly on its way (hopefully still PPC compatible wonders). Just as long as apple doesnt go 100% closed source again im happy, they are profiting from open source, they will be stupid to close off that source of development!

 

[Evangelion]

Yes it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU

They borrowed pieces/parts from the Mach for BSD, but for the most part it's all Mach from NeXTSTEP.

Well, if it was Mach, then why do they call in XNU instead of Mach 😉. As your link clearly states, besides Mach, there are part of BSD and then there's the IO Kit. So it's NOT mach. Based on Mach, yes, but not Mach.

 

[Evangelion]

Mach is MOST DEFINITELY NOT BASED ON BSD'S KERNEL.
It's BASED on the kernel from NeXTSTEP, and borrows from the BSD kernel.
There is a difference, as I view it.

I think you are confused. Mach is not based on BSD, true. It's an independent kernel. But the kernel in OS X is not Mach. The kernel in OS X is called XNU, it's based on Mach, and it also has pieces developed by Apple (IO-kit) and BSD. And besides: Mach is NOT based on NeXTSTEP-kernel, rather, NeXTSTEP-kernel is based on Mach.

 

[Evangelion]

......?? Are you on acid?? 🙄
Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for what Linux has achieved, but it's light-years from being close to OSX in most regards... Most applications are either very crude (often very efficient, but crude...) or feel like they've been thrown together by the geek-squad to solve 1 problem (as opposed as being very flexible), preventing it from being Really good...

Well, I used OS X for close to a year, and then I went back to Linux (as did my wife). To me, Linux IS "Really Good", whereas OS X is less so (it's still miles ahead of Windows though). So it all depends on the person.

And I would rather have an app that solves one problem really, really well, than having an app that does zillion things, but none of them well.

That said, I still love Apple-hardware.

 

[Lollypop]

Well, I used OS X for close to a year, and then I went back to Linux (as did my wife). To me, Linux IS "Really Good", whereas OS X is less so (it's still miles ahead of Windows though). So it all depends on the person.

And I would rather have an app that solves one problem really, really well, than having an app that does zillion things, but none of them well.

That said, I still love Apple-hardware.

Way off topic but why did you go back to linux? What was the alure?

 

[Evangelion]

Way off topic but why did you go back to linux? What was the alure?

Well, I was a Linux-user before I tried out OS X. I bought a Mac Mini a bit over year ago to personally check out OS X that everyone was talking about. I instantly fell in love with the Mini (although I had looked other pieces of Mac-hardware for quite a while in stores). I just LOVE the look 'n feel of it!

I did also enjoy OS X. Sure enough, it was VERY polished, and it had those "nice touches" (genie-effects etc.). And I had no real problems using it at first. But as time progressed, I noticed that I slowly started moving back to Linux. I have tried identifying why that is. For starters, filemanagement (Konqueror in KDE at the time) was clearly superior to Finder in OS X. And I also disliked the Dock. Then there were those cases where I wanted to do something a bit differently, only to notice that OS X does not really allow me to make those changes. It was the "OS X-way, or the highway". I also missed the virtual desktops I had in Linux. I also found that installation and removal of apps is more pleasant in Linux.

Besides those, there were other things as well.... In Linux I had a wonderful community that churned out improvements for the system and shared them with everyone else. I found more or less similar improvements available for OS X as well, but they were usually sold, not shared. Then there was the fact that I believe in free software. Linux is free, OS X is not. But my "re-switch" was not solely due to ideological reasons, it was started by actual problems with the OS.

After I had mostly switched back to Linux, I did keep on using OS X, mostly to manage my iPod and camera. Then I noticed that I can manage my iPod in Linux as well, so I had one less reason to use OS X. Then I decided to try plugging in my digital camera to my Linux-box (I hadn't actually tried it before). I got a nice dialog-box asking me "Would you like to import photos from this camera?". At that point I had no real reason to use OS X anymore. And my wife was happily using Linux as well, so there was no problems expected from that front either.

I planned to sell the Mini, but in the end I decided to install Fedora Core 5 on it, and turn in in to server. And that's where I am today 🙂.

 

[Lollypop]

Well, I was a Linux-user before I tried out OS X. I bought a Mac Mini a bit over year ago to personally check out OS X that everyone was talking about. I instantly fell in love with the Mini (although I had looked other pieces of Mac-hardware for quite a while in stores). I just LOVE the look 'n feel of it!

I did also enjoy OS X. Sure enough, it was VERY polished, and it had those "nice touches" (genie-effects etc.). And I had no real problems using it at first. But as time progressed, I noticed that I slowly started moving back to Linux. I have tried identifying why that is. For starters, filemanagement (Konqueror in KDE at the time) was clearly superior to Finder in OS X. And I also disliked the Dock. Then there were those cases where I wanted to do something a bit differently, only to notice that OS X does not really allow me to make those changes. It was the "OS X-way, or the highway". I also missed the virtual desktops I had in Linux. I also found that installation and removal of apps is more pleasant in Linux.

Besides those, there were other things as well.... In Linux I had a wonderful community that churned out improvements for the system and shared them with everyone else. I found more or less similar improvements available for OS X as well, but they were usually sold, not shared. Then there was the fact that I believe in free software. Linux is free, OS X is not. But my "re-switch" was not solely due to ideological reasons, it was started by actual problems with the OS.

After I had mostly switched back to Linux, I did keep on using OS X, mostly to manage my iPod and camera. Then I noticed that I can manage my iPod in Linux as well, so I had one less reason to use OS X. Then I decided to try plugging in my digital camera to my Linux-box (I hadn't actually tried it before). I got a nice dialog-box asking me "Would you like to import photos from this camera?". At that point I had no real reason to use OS X anymore. And my wife was happily using Linux as well, so there was no problems expected from that front either.

I planned to sell the Mini, but in the end I decided to install Fedora Core 5 on it, and turn in in to server. And that's where I am today 🙂.

Wow, I respect you man. At least you were willing to try out something different, I think if more and more people think like you the mac as well as linux world will be much bigger!

I personally found that there are a ton of opensource stuff for the mac, the only real things I had to buy was MS office and the few more "pro app" kind of things, the rest was all opensource. Thats in my mind the strength of OS X, it has a ton of open parts, while having the quality and supportability of the closed OSes. <attempt to get back to topic> While I know the closure of the kernel will deter a few developers from going the OS X root, the fact that there is still so much thats is open source will mean we still see a lot of neat opnesource stuff like aduim and virtua (a virtual desktop manager btw) </attempt to get back on topic>

 

[eSnow]

I think os x has changed so much since it's open source routes, that it can be allowed to keep itself a bit secret; especially since the...
"Hi I’m a Mac, write a virus for me" advert (exaggerated),
not sure about the t&c&... that goes with open source oses.

Uhm, you do understand that Windows, the platform with the most virii is not exactly open source, right?

 

[Lollypop]

Uhm, you do understand that Windows, the platform with the most virii is not exactly open source, right?

Well the virus argument can be argued either way! If it is closed source people cant easily just scan the code and find a potential bug for a virus to exploit. On the other hand if the source is open its easy for someone to scan the code for bugs that can then be easily fixed.

Its not about the nature of the code, its the nature of the virus writer and their mindset. If Linux had a huge market and was as unpopular as MS then there might even be a few virii for linux. <My own opinion anyway>

 

[peharri]

I just saw the coolest commercial 😀 😉 😛

One guys was talking and said he was a Mac and ...


... the other talked a little bit and the FROZE, a couple of times, Oh he said he was a PC 😱 😱 😱


Sounds like a GOOD reason to me to bring the cornel in, especially with all those hackers out there that could look at and use the open code to HACK 😎

Yeah, that's right, because the most hacked operating system in the world is well known for its open source code. Why I was just downloading winxp-ntkrnl51-src.tgz only the other day...

Seriously, there's only one way to comment on this, and that's negatively. There's no full explanation for why Apple has abandoned "open source" XNU for Intel, but the "speculation" Arn talks about is about as close as we're going to get, and it does reek of PHBish reasoning.

Here's what's going on. Apple has launched Mac OS X for Intel. It doesn't want people porting OS X to Beige Box PCs. It appears to believe it's "helping" hackers by releasing source code. It's arguable that there's any truth to this, hackers have a long history of hacking the copy prevention methods out of every binary known to man, so how closing the source will help is open to question.

Apple believes it can get away with this because the number of users of Darwin is pretty low. (Actually, I was going to put it on my Thinkpad, but I'm in two minds about that now. But had I done so, that would have probably doubled the Intel version's "market share"...) Apple released Darwin in the first place after being pressured by the Open Source advocate Eric Raymond, who lobbied intensively, arguing that by releasing Darwin, an entire community of developers would help Apple out, fixing bugs and adding new features Apple had never thought of, making Darwin the BEST OS EVAH.

Raymond was full of crap. That never happened. Darwin development remained with Apple. Some people semi-joined in, but as soon as it became clear that Darwin wasn't attracting a community of developers, Apple pretty much closed open development of the OS (while continuing to release updates under the APSL for the sake of PR, helping developers understand the internals of Mac OS X, and presumably other reasons.)

Darwin is, essentially, a failure. It no longer represents anything. The "Open Source" movement continued to concentrate on GNU/Linux. The small community interested in Darwin found it harder and harder to keep up with Apple. It didn't attract a base. Meanwhile it's attracted a lot of technical criticisms that arguably require a revamp of the kernel to fix anyway.

So this is negative. It's negative because it represents the failure the APSL Darwin became. It's negative because information has been removed from the public domain. It's negative because it represents a strategy to "protect" Mac OS X from piracy that's completely moronic. It's negative because the freedom to tinker with your own, bought and paid for, computers just got a little harder.

There's a relatively simple way in which Apple can deal with the piracy issue BTW, or at least ensure they make money from Mac OS X on non-Macs. I don't think they'll do it, but I think everyone knows what it is.

 

[eSnow]

Well the virus argument can be argued either way!

Right, I just prefer to stick to what I can see - and this is thousands of virii attacking windows, few if any, Linux.

 

[Lollypop]

Yeah, that's right, because the most hacked operating system in the world is well known for its open source code. Why I was just downloading winxp-ntkrnl51-src.tgz only the other day...

Seriously, there's only one way to comment on this, and that's negatively. There's no full explanation for why Apple has abandoned "open source" XNU for Intel, but the "speculation" Arn talks about is about as close as we're going to get, and it does reek of PHBish reasoning.

Here's what's going on. Apple has launched Mac OS X for Intel. It doesn't want people porting OS X to Beige Box PCs. It appears to believe it's "helping" hackers by releasing source code. It's arguable that there's any truth to this, hackers have a long history of hacking the copy prevention methods out of every binary known to man, so how closing the source will help is open to question.

Apple believes it can get away with this because the number of users of Darwin is pretty low. (Actually, I was going to put it on my Thinkpad, but I'm in two minds about that now. But had I done so, that would have probably doubled the Intel version's "market share"...) Apple released Darwin in the first place after being pressured by the Open Source advocate Eric Raymond, who lobbied intensively, arguing that by releasing Darwin, an entire community of developers would help Apple out, fixing bugs and adding new features Apple had never thought of, making Darwin the BEST OS EVAH.

Raymond was full of crap. That never happened. Darwin development remained with Apple. Some people semi-joined in, but as soon as it became clear that Darwin wasn't attracting a community of developers, Apple pretty much closed open development of the OS (while continuing to release updates under the APSL for the sake of PR, helping developers understand the internals of Mac OS X, and presumably other reasons.)

Darwin is, essentially, a failure. It no longer represents anything. The "Open Source" movement continued to concentrate on GNU/Linux. The small community interested in Darwin found it harder and harder to keep up with Apple. It didn't attract a base. Meanwhile it's attracted a lot of technical criticisms that arguably require a revamp of the kernel to fix anyway.

So this is negative. It's negative because it represents the failure the APSL Darwin became. It's negative because information has been removed from the public domain. It's negative because it represents a strategy to "protect" Mac OS X from piracy that's completely moronic. It's negative because the freedom to tinker with your own, bought and paid for, computers just got a little harder.

There's a relatively simple way in which Apple can deal with the piracy issue BTW, or at least ensure they make money from Mac OS X on non-Macs. I don't think they'll do it, but I think everyone knows what it is.

Ok, im gona bite what is the way apple can deal with piracy? Just for you info, apple had another closed source OS that nobody managed to crack, I believe it was called os 1 - os 9. Closing the kernel can help apple deter hackers, especially if they do some hardcore stuff in the kernel to make the average hackers life a living hell. And you say darwin is dead, why do you say that? Darwin is still alive, still open source, its just the XNU conponent that has been closed. There are also these nice things called darwin Ports, Im not a expect, ,but I would asume without darwin being open source the darwin ports would have struggled to get anything done.

 

[Evangelion]

Right, I just prefer to stick to what I can see - and this is thousands of virii attacking windows, few if any, Linux.

I believe that there's about half a dozen "viruses" for Linux, and they are all more of less "proof of concepts", instead of "real" viruses. And speaking of security and open-source: OpenBSD is usually thought as the most secure OS out there (with exceptions to some specialist OS'es), and it's open source

 

[peharri]

Ok, im gona bite what is the way apple can deal with piracy?

You don't need me to tell you the answer to that, you just don't want to hear it.

Just for you info, apple had another closed source OS that nobody managed to crack, I believe it was called os 1 - os 9.

68000 versions of Mac OS ran on Amigas and Atari STs using third party tools. PowerPC versions were also widely hacked, I've heard of people running them on RS/6000s and IBM Thinkpad 801s. I'm not sure where you get it from that Mac OS wasn't hacked for other computers with similar CPUs, but I can assure you you're quite, quite, wrong.

Closing the kernel can help apple deter hackers, especially if they do some hardcore stuff in the kernel to make the average hackers life a living hell.

As I've already said, hackers have had no problems hacking binary-only apps with copy-prevention schemes in them for years. Most applications that have some kind of copy-prevention scheme are available, unlocked, via the P2P networks or Usenet. Whether Apple's decision makes it slightly harder or not, the fact is it will be circumvented, because there is demand.

And you say darwin is dead, why do you say that? Darwin is still alive, still open source, its just the XNU conponent that has been closed.

I said the Intel version was. As I said above, Darwin has few users. A key component of the Intel version of Darwin is no longer available. It's dead. It only "lives" as the source code for the userland of Mac OS X, and as a viable OS for PPC.

There are also these nice things called darwin Ports, Im not a expect, ,but I would asume without darwin being open source the darwin ports would have struggled to get anything done.

I'm struggling to even understand how such a confusion of concepts could be condensed into so few words. Darwin Ports is a collection of ports of popular predominantly-open source (actually, just source-available) applications to Darwin. It doesn't require any aspect of Darwin be open source, as open source applications do not require the operating system they run upon to be open source. Darwin Ports predates the Intel Darwin being uncompilable, but it will continue to exist, even under Mac OS X.

 

[nostrum]

I only bought a Mac becasue I wanted to use OS X. Windows is too problematic and Linux is a bit too clunky at the moment.

If I could run OS X on a PC I'd have just built my own machine.

But Apple are a hardware company so they have to protect their market I guess.

 

[pizzach]

I only bought a Mac becasue I wanted to use OS X. Windows is too problematic and Linux is a bit too clunky at the moment.

If I could run OS X on a PC I'd have just built my own machine.

But Apple are a hardware company so they have to protect their market I guess.

I wouldn't be surprised if apple became a software company within the next 10 years with how they have been changing. They sell a lot of software now.

 

[pizzach]

Well, I was a Linux-user before I tried out OS X. I bought a Mac Mini a bit over year ago to personally check out OS X that everyone was talking about. I instantly fell in love with the Mini (although I had looked other pieces of Mac-hardware for quite a while in stores). I just LOVE the look 'n feel of it!

I did also enjoy OS X. Sure enough, it was VERY polished, and it had those "nice touches" (genie-effects etc.). And I had no real problems using it at first. But as time progressed, I noticed that I slowly started moving back to Linux. I have tried identifying why that is. For starters, filemanagement (Konqueror in KDE at the time) was clearly superior to Finder in OS X. And I also disliked the Dock. Then there were those cases where I wanted to do something a bit differently, only to notice that OS X does not really allow me to make those changes. It was the "OS X-way, or the highway". I also missed the virtual desktops I had in Linux. I also found that installation and removal of apps is more pleasant in Linux.

Besides those, there were other things as well.... In Linux I had a wonderful community that churned out improvements for the system and shared them with everyone else. I found more or less similar improvements available for OS X as well, but they were usually sold, not shared. Then there was the fact that I believe in free software. Linux is free, OS X is not. But my "re-switch" was not solely due to ideological reasons, it was started by actual problems with the OS.

After I had mostly switched back to Linux, I did keep on using OS X, mostly to manage my iPod and camera. Then I noticed that I can manage my iPod in Linux as well, so I had one less reason to use OS X. Then I decided to try plugging in my digital camera to my Linux-box (I hadn't actually tried it before). I got a nice dialog-box asking me "Would you like to import photos from this camera?". At that point I had no real reason to use OS X anymore. And my wife was happily using Linux as well, so there was no problems expected from that front either.

I planned to sell the Mini, but in the end I decided to install Fedora Core 5 on it, and turn in in to server. And that's where I am today 🙂.

You da man! I like Linux and Mac OS X but usually avoid Windows. Personally, I don't use kde on linux. I am a Gnome user who mostly uses the command line. The funny thing is that I am starting to use Mac OS X more like Linux nowadays...

 

[octoberdeath]

i thought being so open was a strong point for apple. did that not give people the ability to find and figure out how to fix things that were wrong with the OS ultimatly giving apple the ability to quickly send out patches?

 

[Rocketman]

I would claim it is to reduce attacks by malware.

It is one of Apple's major competitive advatages.

Rocketman

 

[Evangelion]

You da man! I like Linux and Mac OS X but usually avoid Windows. Personally, I don't use kde on linux. I am a Gnome user who mostly uses the command line. The funny thing is that I am starting to use Mac OS X more like Linux nowadays...

I like both KDE and GNOME. Back when I still used OS X, I used KDE. But few moths ago I decided to try out GNOME (as you can see, I like trying out new things), and I'm still using it.

 

[Evangelion]

I would claim it is to reduce attacks by malware.

It is one of Apple's major competitive advatages.

Rocketman

Being open-source does not mean that the OS will end up being target for malware. Windows is closed, and it's BY FAR the worst in this area. Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD are open, and their track-record is very, very good.

 

[peharri]

i thought being so open was a strong point for apple. did that not give people the ability to find and figure out how to fix things that were wrong with the OS ultimatly giving apple the ability to quickly send out patches?

That's the theory, and it's what Open Source advocates argued when they tried to encourage Apple to release parts of Mac OS X under an open source license before it was released, resulting in Darwin and the APSL.

In practice, Apple started to close the development process after a few years, making it more difficult for third parties to be involved. OpenDarwin hasn't released a complete, independent, Darwin release since version 7 (based upon Panther's Darwin) for example. Clearly Apple wasn't getting the feedback promised, or if they were, it wasn't high enough quality to actually be worth using.

 

[Evangelion]

In practice, Apple started to close the development process after a few years, making it more difficult for third parties to be involved. OpenDarwin hasn't released a complete, independent, Darwin release since version 7 (based upon Panther's Darwin) for example. Clearly Apple wasn't getting the feedback promised, or if they were, it wasn't high enough quality to actually be worth using.

Or they did get lots of feedback, but they just decided to close it anyway. Being open reduces their control of the platform. And lets face it, Apple is all about control (for better or worse)

 

[timothyjoelwrig]

What's wrong with making money? That is why businesses are in business...to make money/profit. Why is that such a bad thing? Would you rather Apple give away everything for cost or a loss? Doing that means no more Apple.

The best thing a company can do is be profitable so that they are around in the future. That way you can always go back to that business and buy more things.

I couldn't agree more. I've never understood the "big bad corporation" mentality. The beauty of a free marketplace is if you don't like something, you can create an alternative.

But back to the topic: If XNU isn't included, then am I to assume that the intel source isn't bootable (unless you use kernel source pre 10.4.3)? and if so,..what's the point if releasing the intel source at all?

 

[peharri]

I couldn't agree more. I've never understood the "big bad corporation" mentality. The beauty of a free marketplace is if you don't like something, you can create an alternative.

Well, some times, it depends upon whether the "obvious" and only-available solutions to certain problems you'll inevitably encounter have been patented or not 😉

But back to the topic: If XNU isn't included, then am I to assume that the intel source isn't bootable (unless you use kernel source pre 10.4.3)? and if so,..what's the point if releasing the intel source at all?

You're right, and there's not a lot of point in releasing the Intel source at all. I guess people can fix minor issues in Mac OS X 10.4.3 with it, as long as the source to the relevent module is available.

I did think of one potential reason why XNU hasn't been released that doesn't involve inevitably fruitless attempts to slow down piracy. What if there's a technology that's going to be released later as a surprise, that requires substantial modifications to XNU's kernel, and that Apple are keen on implementing right away so that upon-release of said-technology, all existing Intel Macs will run it?

Like, er, virtualization? Microsoft launches Vista, and Apple releases Boot Camp 2 on the same day, announcing that Tiger, the soon-to-be-released Leopard (we don't know when Vista and Leopard are going to be released for certain, we just have a rough idea), and Vista can co-exist and run simultaneously on all Intel Macs. Even the old, cheap, ones.

We know Apple's interested in virtualization, and speculation has been rife for many months that Boot Camp is a precursor to an announcement of a virtualization system from Apple themselves. We also know that the best virtualization works for operating systems whose kernels know about the concept and support the idea of being hosted. Making XNU virtualizable will help an outer wrapper like XEN support it efficiently - ie if OS X is built for it, and Windows isn't, OS X will run great, and Windows will run albeit with minor limitations.

This makes a little more sense than the piracy argument, which I'm having trouble with. Surely Apple, be it their engineers and their PHBs, aren't so stupid as to think that binary code deters pirates? Mind you, this is the same company who still thinks you're supposed to put as much thermal grease on a CPU as you put ketchup on a hotdog, even with the entire computing community yelling at them for it.