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reactordevyesterday at 7:26 PM3 repliesview on HN

NeXTSTEP did but that was in the 90s. When Apple bought NeXTSTEP (and Jobs returned to the helm of Apple), they used that OS as the basis for macOS X.

Due to GPL, they release the sources to the BSD code they use. Everything else is proprietary.

Likewise Sony used BSD for PlayStation OS. They publish the sources to the changes to BSD they made, the rest is proprietary.


Replies

p_ingtoday at 2:50 AM

Why would BSD use GPL?

BSD has a BSD license. It doesn't require source code releases.

bitwizeyesterday at 7:42 PM

There's no GPL in the BSD sources used by Apple or Sony. They are free to release their operating systems as closed source; Sony does this. Apple releases Darwin sources "out of the goodness of their hearts", meaning, back in the 2000s they wanted to capture mindshare amongst the tech community for whom Linux was the strongest contender. Now that the future has refused to change, the year of the Linux desktop never materialized, and macOS has become the default developer's workstation OS, Apple has been much more sparing with Darwin source drops and may cease them altogether.

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