Has anyone gotten a hold of Apple and either:
A) Asked them to opensource OpenStep, and been taken seriously (or given a serious answer)
B) Petitioned Apple to release the OS4.2 bits that sit ontop of the kernel and the development environment, as APSL opensource?
OpenStep 4.2 is over 10 years old now. Darwin has already been released as opensource (under APSL), which AFAIK contains most of Mach and wouldn't require that much work to re-bolt most of OS4.2 ontop of again (assuming one has the source code). OS X has, well, 10 more years of R&D with it then OS4.2 does, and we've got things like Core Image and Animation, Quartz, and Aqua to thank for that- so OS4.2 is hardly a competitor for OS X.
Anything "secretive" that Apple buried in OS4.2 has likely been replicated by GNUstep these days, so I can't imagine what they would have to protect in that regard. Darwin is already APSL and source code is freely available, so obviously there wasn't anything worth protecting in that.
I don't mean to be blunt here, but there aren't exactly *many* OS4.2 developers out there- and OS4.2 is really a remarkable OS (even today). It is NOT easy to get a hold of 4.2 (legally, or even illegally) like it is to just go and download a recent Linux distribution, and even if you do get a hold of OS4.2- the hardware support is 10 years behind present-day equipment and thus it isn't exactly the easiest thing to run.
What I'm basically saying is that OS4.2 on top of a more recent Darwin kernel would make one damned fine OS. I can't find anything on google that would suggest that a petition has been attempted, which is why I'm posting here- because this appears to be one of the last, few active OS4.2 communities. An APSL released OS4.2 operating system would obviously give OS4.2 a new lease on life- and depending on how that rolls, might even become a *serious* competitor to Linux (but not OS X).
So how about it?
I don't see the community going anywhere significant without an open OpenStep release or OS4.2 based OS (OS5.0?). I'm not asking to opensource things like EOF, just the actual OS (GUI/API) that sits ontop of the kernel (Mach/Darwin) and the development environment. It's not like we're talking about Rhapsody here (where I'm sure the UI rings close enough to OS8/9 that Apple Legal might have something to day), we're talking about an OS that Apple no longer officially supports, looks nothing like OS X, and will likely never support the happy-fun things that OS X provides.
They threw Darwin out there as source code only, why not most of OS4.2 as well?
-DN
I've covered this a number of times before, but I'll run down the basics again...
BSD used in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody was licensed by NeXT/Apple from the Regents of the University of California. Contrary to popular belief this was not released to the public. 4.4BSD Lite was a scrubbed down version of BSD, not the original BSD. Darwin had the original (licensed) BSD parts removed, and replaced them with elements from 4.4BSD Lite and FreeBSD before releasing that code.
Display Postscript used in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody was licensed by NeXT/Apple from Adobe. Adobe was planning on charging Apple for the use of Display Postscript in Mac OS X which was why Apple abandon it.
PANTONE Colors used within NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody was licensed by NeXT/Apple from Pantone, Inc. This aspect was removed before Mac OS X was released because Apple didn't wish to continue to pay for the license to use it.
None of these things are Apple's to give away. Period. Apple has no rights to give away the intellectual property of other people. Apple is bound by law to honor the licenses that they entered with these companies and must pay them for each copy of NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody that Apple distributes (even if Apple doesn't charge for it).
These are the facts of life. Nothing is going to change this. There will never be a good reason for Apple to revisit this issue.
Apple has been open to the idea of something that falls in line with the original license agreement (the selling of copies of OPENSTEP), but expecting anything beyond that is little more than a fantasy.