I've long suspected that having OS X compatibility for Linux would be easier and more useful than Windows compatibility for many people. Due to their similar underpinnings and less legacy stuff in OS X.
Being able to run XCode , Photoshop and Sequel Pro under Linux would certainly make my life easier.
Whether Apple wants to kill this , support it or be indifferent would I suppose depend on whether they feel threatened by Linux on the desktop.
They may even be happy to push people who are unhappy with the "iOSification" of Apple towards Linux in the future.
> Whether Apple wants to kill this , support it or be indifferent would I suppose depend on whether they feel threatened by Linux on the desktop.
They may even be happy to push people who are unhappy with the "iOSification" of Apple towards Linux in the future.
Given Apple's behavior in the past and in other areas, I would be very, very surprised if they were to condone (let alone promote) anything even remotely resembling OS X applications on another system.
While I don't think either outcome is likely, I'd be more willing to bet on them invoking some absurd copyright law to try and prevent this kind of work from happening (something along the lines of Oracle vs. Google).
I felt NT was an apt comparison because not only is it the basis for the current Windows, it also was their first 32-bit offering, i.e. where stuff got serious. 16-bit Windows was a fairly different beast. 9x was certainly influential but (1) is now dead and (2) came after NT, borrowed lots from NT in the beginning. In light of this, drawing comparisons between 1.0 and Win8 doesn't seem all that appropriate to me.
I guess my hesitation was caused by the assumption that while windows before NT was all 16 bit / 32 bit hybrid; it's API's are still essentially the same which is what you would care about when re-platting an API.
However I will concede my argument like a true gentlemen, as I now realize the ABI is what we should care about. It is almost certainly different even if the API's haven't fluxed that much, and that is what a re-platt project would most care about.
My point was the legacy is there and it's pretty large, should not be understated. Apple may not care so much about compatibility between releases or with NeXT binaries from 1987 (though I don't think Windows code from '87 works so well on NT either), but the old code is there and if your argument is that sort of thing doesn't help binary compatibility, then that's a problem. I was making my point in shorthand fashion, so I didn't even touch on Mach which is very old as well.
People have this impression that OS X is flashy and new and immune to or not experienced in code rot, and I didn't think it rings all that true.
That would seem to me to be the least of the problems. Just as you can install GNU coreutils on OS X, you can compile the BSD utilities to run on Linux as well.
I wasn't saying that it was impossible to run them. I'm just commenting on an issue that was immediately apparent to me.
If a program calls '/usr/bin/nc' and expect BSD options, it's not going to get them. "Replace GNU coreutils with BSD coreutils" is an option, but not one that everyone would be ready to jump at, because now things running on your Linux system that expect GNU options won't be getting them.
Being able to run XCode , Photoshop and Sequel Pro under Linux would certainly make my life easier.
Whether Apple wants to kill this , support it or be indifferent would I suppose depend on whether they feel threatened by Linux on the desktop.
They may even be happy to push people who are unhappy with the "iOSification" of Apple towards Linux in the future.