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Ariii

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 26, 2012
681
10
Chicago
OS X wasn't directly built on top of NeXTSTEP, even though it was also Unix-based. Why didn't they open-source it like OS 9? The UI is different, and there's no way to hack it in order to make it enough like OS X. OS X doesn't really have the 'blocks' thing either, and it's based off of the XNU kernel.
 
Mac OS 9 is not open source. No classic Mac is open source.

Oh, sorry! I think putting it as abandon-ware could help Apple sort of say that OS X makes it obsolete. Steve Jobs himself has said that OS 9 was dead.
 
OS X wasn't directly built on top of NeXTSTEP, even though it was also Unix-based. Why didn't they open-source it like OS 9? The UI is different, and there's no way to hack it in order to make it enough like OS X. OS X doesn't really have the 'blocks' thing either, and it's based off of the XNU kernel.

NeXTSTEP was open sourced by version 3/4 ... it was called OpenSTEP!
 
Oh, sorry! I think putting it as abandon-ware could help Apple sort of say that OS X makes it obsolete. Steve Jobs himself has said that OS 9 was dead.

7.5.3 and the 7.5.5 update are free as disk images on Apple's site for download. 7.6, 8.0, 8.5, and 9.0 are not available for download.
 
NeXTSTEP was open sourced by version 3/4 ... it was called OpenSTEP!

Umm... OpenSTEP was an API, not an operating system...

As for NeXTSTEP, I would love to see it open-sourced, especially to see the thing they had with the blocks. Anyways, I heard it was very easy to develop for, and many of the features aren't in modern OS's.
 
Just to name a few:

• WebKit
• CUPS
• Bonjour
• LLVM
• LLDB
• ALAC
• XQuartz
• MacRuby
• launchd
• libdispatch

You were saying?

Those aren't Apple projects (aside from ALAC, launchd and libdispatch) and the license (the GPL) forces them to "give them away". :rolleyes:

You were saying ?

As for this thread, where's a good facepalm ?
 
OS X wasn't directly built on top of NeXTSTEP, even though it was also Unix-based. Why didn't they open-source it like OS 9? The UI is different, and there's no way to hack it in order to make it enough like OS X. OS X doesn't really have the 'blocks' thing either, and it's based off of the XNU kernel.

Because they didn't. Just because a product is old, doesn't mean you have to give it away for free.
 
Because they didn't. Just because a product is old, doesn't mean you have to give it away for free.

Apple isn't making any money off of it. It's not like they're giving away free NeXT computers. It costs them nothing to make, and they can give away to an infinite number at no cost. I'm just looking for the reason they didn't make it available to the public. And there's some people who would definitely be interested in looking at it. It's very, very hard to pick up a copy of NeXTSTEP as well.
 
Apple isn't making any money off of it. It's not like they're giving away free NeXT computers. It costs them nothing to make, and they can give away to an infinite number at no cost. I'm just looking for the reason they didn't make it available to the public. And there's some people who would definitely be interested in looking at it. It's very, very hard to pick up a copy of NeXTSTEP as well.

Who cares? Not everyone is like ID Software. When my book gets over ten years old I won't make it free. There is no reason why Apple should do this. If they don't want anyone to have it, that is that.
 
Apple isn't making any money off of it. It's not like they're giving away free NeXT computers. It costs them nothing to make, and they can give away to an infinite number at no cost. I'm just looking for the reason they didn't make it available to the public. And there's some people who would definitely be interested in looking at it. It's very, very hard to pick up a copy of NeXTSTEP as well.

If you want to look at NeXTSTEP, just have a look at OS X. What do you want to see so badly ? The GUI ? You'll be awfully disappointed, by this point, it's very dated.
 
If you look hard on the 'net you will probably find a VMware guest-os image of NeXSTEP.
It's fun to run NeXTSTEP. Yes, it's old, but you will find many similarities with OS X. It definitely is the beginning of OS X and iOS.
 
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