Darwin Kernel: XNU Kernel (THIS IS NOT ABOUT A HACKINTOSH!)

[SL6-A1000]

Hey,
Does anybody know if the opensource kernel for Darwin will ever take off as just an opensource operating system like Linux or BSD.

I know there are communities out there like MacOSX86 and various others, but they aren't really looking at making the parts of Mac OSX that are opensource portable and available on more than just the intel architechure. I mean they do indirectly, but only because their is such a huge base for which people want to create a hackintosh on AMD computers. Not because they want to port the kernel to more architectures.

But i'm not talking about creating a hackintosh. I am talking about creating a Darwin OS that is open source and aims to be available on at least the main 2 cpu architectures (AMD64 and i386). That aims to create a distro that is not focused around an opensource look-a-like MacOSX or pure apple software like PureDarwin. A distro which only similarity to the MacOSX is the kernel and maybe the HFS+ filesystem.

I don't understand why no one as taken that idea, iam sure iam not the only person who has thought that would be kool. Or would like to see how it would fair against the current OS's in particularly BSD.

[jayd512]

The Darwin kernel is open source. But is not published under GPL.
It's published under the BSD license. Which has a few significant differences than GPL.
I've not read up on the specifics of the BSD license, but basically I could use the source and change it if I wanted to. No harm to the original writers of the code. But there are differences there that I'd rather not get into.
Apple jumped on that wagon... with gusto.

[SL6-A1000]

I don't think you quite understand what iam getting at or trying to discuss. Yeah i know all about apple and the Mac OSX, but that isn't the interest (at least not for me), i am interested in the kernel itself! The hybrid kernel (4.4BSD lite and Mach3).

[jayd512]

Sorry about that... I misunderstood your post.
I see what you mean now.
As far as why it hasn't been pushed forward more, I'm not really sure.
It seems like there would be a bigger push towards developing an OS around it, though, seeing that it has the stability and robustness inherent in all *Nix's.

[SL6-A1000]

I think this is an interesting article, L4/Darwin: Evolving UNIX , sorry i can't post the direct link but it's a PDF. It sort of explains why it may not be having the lime light like some of the others at least for developers, i mean from the obvious standpoint at the moment it doesn't offer much more than its brothers NetBSD or FreeBSD or even DragonflyBSD, but it definitly sounds like the kernel is going in a different direction then any of the BSD systems.

On a side note:
My two cents for the day: If people want the Mac OS X to work on any computer, they should focus on developing the kernel that is opensource, and then creating compability between the developed opensource darwin kernel (which they know works on any PC) and the existing Mac OSX. At least to me it makes more sense to go from the approach of bottom-up (the bottom being the kernel), then taking the top-down approach (the top being the GUI), at least in my opinion. You don't develop an OS starting with the GUI and working down, that just ends in disaster.

Not to give the Mac OSx86 community a hard time on what they do (cause it isn't easy).