Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gh02t 2887 days ago
People forget that actual Unix descendants are really mostly proprietary. Linux and BSD are what we often think of today, but those are really more "Unix-like's" and many of the "true" Unixes tend to be proprietary systems like AIX, HP-UX, IRIX (now deceased), z/OS etc.

The bare core of macOS (Darwin) is open source, but pretty much everything people identify with macOS is proprietary code built on top of Darwin. You used to be able to get standalone distributions of Darwin (maybe you still can?) that people built from Apple's source and they were almost completely unrecognizable.
1 comments
selectodude 2887 days ago
It's only completely unrecognizable because Darwin is the kernel and userspace. The UI is whatever you want it to be.
link
gh02t 2887 days ago
Right, that's my point. What most people associate with "macOS" is actually the stuff layered on top of Darwin, which is mostly proprietary. It's not just the GUI, it's also a lot of the frameworks and libraries as well.
link