I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

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overclockedmind
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I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

Post by overclockedmind »

It's probably been tried. Been asked. But, I want to put together a proposal that would persuade the company to do so. We all know there are copies of copies of their proprietary stuff out there. That's because people need it, but don't have a legitimate place to get it. So, goodwill, kind of in parallel with what this project is about.

Then, I'd like to improve the snot out of it. Whether they need to know that? Eh, dunno, LOL.

The nail in the coffin, on stage. How many years ago has that been? It is their right to kill it, but it's also their right to have a place to point at and go, hey we don't support it, but there's this thing here. Technically I'd prefer that the move get us anything and everything pre-transition to OS X. So, all of the versions backward from there.

We'd free it from branding, make points to direct people back to us; there's a ton of stuff that we could do for Apple if we did such a thing. A crazy thing. A modern 9. (Thanks Apple, for the versioning number room, hehe.)

Whether you're into it or not, I'll likely put a petition in place for it; and what I need are people that would sign on to say "hey yeah, I like that idea, have fun with it but I'm saying yes" unless they are dead set against it.

----

So yeah, I'm that crazy. But what is normal anyway?

Let me know what you think about this; like, walk around with it in your head for a day, sleep on it, or give a gut reaction and then a secondary one.
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richmond62
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

Post by richmond62 »

It has been requested several times: after all, with a bit of tweaking it could work on Power 7 PPC machines . . .

But Apple . . .
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

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richmond62 wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 3:54 pm It has been requested several times: after all, with a bit of tweaking it could work on Power 7 PPC machines . . .

But Apple . . .
... is Apple. They'll keep it just to see it not used where they don't want it to be.
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

overclockedmind wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 12:27 pm It's probably been tried. Been asked. But, I want to put together a proposal that would persuade the company to do so. We all know there are copies of copies of their proprietary stuff out there. That's because people need it, but don't have a legitimate place to get it. So, goodwill, kind of in parallel with what this project is about.

Then, I'd like to improve the snot out of it. Whether they need to know that? Eh, dunno, LOL.

The nail in the coffin, on stage. How many years ago has that been? It is their right to kill it, but it's also their right to have a place to point at and go, hey we don't support it, but there's this thing here. Technically I'd prefer that the move get us anything and everything pre-transition to OS X. So, all of the versions backward from there.

We'd free it from branding, make points to direct people back to us; there's a ton of stuff that we could do for Apple if we did such a thing. A crazy thing. A modern 9. (Thanks Apple, for the versioning number room, hehe.)

Whether you're into it or not, I'll likely put a petition in place for it; and what I need are people that would sign on to say "hey yeah, I like that idea, have fun with it but I'm saying yes" unless they are dead set against it.

----

So yeah, I'm that crazy. But what is normal anyway?

Let me know what you think about this; like, walk around with it in your head for a day, sleep on it, or give a gut reaction and then a secondary one.
Well there's emulation but emulation is certainly not quite the same as a real 'metal' PowerPC Mac.
There certainly are ways to improve Classic macOS with software (with extensions, control panels, ResEdit hacks, etc. I've been able to add some macOS X+ features to classic) and the macOS 'ROM' chip was converted to a extension so that can be hacked too (and has been hacked for a community 'Universal' build of macOS 9 that boots on certain PowerPC macs that don't officially support booting into macOS 9).

But as far as Apple officially releasing the source, I doubt that will ever happen. There was supposedly a beta or alpha intel x86 build of System 7 that leaked out (IIRC some source code too), going the other way, I believe around that time MicroSoft had built a version of Windows NT that ran on RISC / PowerPC (I think that was when Apple released 'Workgroup Servers'.

If they were going to put any source into the public's hands, I'd MUCH rather that it be HyperCard 2.x and 1.x, I've heard that the engineers like that took over from Atkinson and Co. had a tough time figuring everything out, and attempts to reverse-engine, the stack format, the 'WOBA' (Wrath of Bill Atkinson, coined by OpenXION-Becky) bitmap format, etc.

On the non-classic macOS front, thanks to Richard Stallman's deal with Steve Jobs, we have FOSS GNU-Step, based on NeXT/OpenStep/Mac Cocoa/CoreFoundation... and since it uses heaping chunks of BSD UNIX underneath, for many years Apple released the base OS source as 'Darwin' and it's XNU Kernel. Recently there's been some renewed interest (I'm very interested) in making a Mac 'ReactOS'-like OS that has some Mac features. Those projects currently are helloSytem and ravynOS (previously called AiryxOS), both based on FreeBSD. HelloSystem aims to have Linux binary compatibility (FreeBSD with Ubuntu subsystem), while ravynOS aims to have macOS binary compatibility as well. Neither is ready for regular use but I have high-hopes for the future.
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

Interesting that Apple, up until macOS 10.10 had left in constants for some other operating systems, leftovers from OpenStep / NeXTstep:
https://developer.apple.com/documentati ... guage=objc
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

Post by FourthWorld »

Imagine you're Apple, then ask yourself: You have a giant pile of code no one's look at in years, some of it's patent-encumbered, some of it may represent possible security issues for legacy components still in use (HFS+ is just one example), and a great many other things you can't even imagine since few (if any) people working there today has even seen the code in decades.

What is the business justification for doing the deep code review needed to release it, the legal cost of reviewing the implications of license choice, and the cost of maintaining the repository?
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

Post by overclockedmind »

FourthWorld wrote: Mon Jul 11, 2022 6:00 pm Imagine you're Apple, then ask yourself: You have a giant pile of code no one's look at in years, some of it's patent-encumbered, some of it may represent possible security issues for legacy components still in use (HFS+ is just one example), and a great many other things you can't even imagine since few (if any) people working there today has even seen the code in decades.

What is the business justification for doing the deep code review needed to release it, the legal cost of reviewing the implications of license choice, and the cost of maintaining the repository?
Customer goodwill. Some erasure of the image that they see human beings as a gold mine. Lawyers, IANAL. I don't know that they have to 'fix' anything though. That would be up to who's NeXT (cough.) Hosting? For long enough for someone(s) to pull it via git or one of its alternatives? They'd never even see the bandwidth blip unless it was on a dedicated environment.

I'll admit to being less than my best today. Real Life can... bleh.
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

Post by richmond62 »

I want someone to start manufacturing PPC machines that will run Mac OS 9.

There would be little point in the OS without NEW hardware, as PPC machines from 20+ years ago will not last forever.
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

Post by richmond62 »

I would be even happier if Apple could release a version of their operating system that would allow me to continue using 32-bit programs on my 64-bit Mac Mini without having to fart around with about 5 Macs of various vintages and messing around with USB drives all the time.
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Re: I want Apple to open source classic Mac OS.

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richmond62 wrote: Wed Jul 13, 2022 9:17 pm I would be even happier if Apple could release a version of their operating system that would allow me to continue using 32-bit programs on my 64-bit Mac Mini without having to fart around with about 5 Macs of various vintages and messing around with USB drives all the time.
This. All of the this. Oh and, for the love of God and honor, no VTs. Whereas in Linux, you just switch to a console-only mode (while still running) and say, kill and restart the Window Manager or Display Manager and yes, yes you might have lost something, but you're not restarting.
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