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Airyx OS

airyx.org

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Re: Airyx OS

#31

Post by orionblastar »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #29
3np wrote: post #4

More information and motivation in the git repo[0], the link to which I didn't spot easily in the site header. The main design goals are: * source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) * similar GUI metaphors and familiar UX (file manager, application launcher, top menu bar that reflects the open application, etc) * compatible with macOS filesystems (HFS+…

> source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) Hard to see how this can be done legally. The libraries (sorry, Frameworks) that make up the user-space runtime for macOS are all proprietary. There's no replacement for the most important parts of it.

Darwin can run limited MacOS applications provided they don't use a proprietary Apple MacOS library. Airyx is so limited and doesn't have a lot of users to be worth suing over I think.

Re: Airyx OS

#32

Post by peatmoss »

vzaliva wrote: post #9

Projects like these will be always one step behind the thing they are trying to replicate (MacOS in this case). It is better to spend one's creative energy innovating and coming up with better solutions rather than re-implementing what Apple is doing.

I disagree. NeXT / macOS has been a pretty stable target for a very, very long time. If you’re going to clean room implement anything, a stable thing is a great target.

macOS has, however, been making superficial changes that people don’t care about. A free macOS desktop alternative would build on a stable set of core technologies, and let people do the crazy things that they want, and not do the crazy things that they don’t want.

Re: Airyx OS

#33

Post by jhawk28 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #29
3np wrote: post #4

More information and motivation in the git repo[0], the link to which I didn't spot easily in the site header. The main design goals are: * source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) * similar GUI metaphors and familiar UX (file manager, application launcher, top menu bar that reflects the open application, etc) * compatible with macOS filesystems (HFS+…

> source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) Hard to see how this can be done legally. The libraries (sorry, Frameworks) that make up the user-space runtime for macOS are all proprietary. There's no replacement for the most important parts of it.

You would need to reverse engineer what the frameworks are supposed to do and provide new implementations. (You can see all their external APIs) This is what Google did with Java on Android. The courts currently view this as legal (Google v Oracle).

Re: Airyx OS

#34

Post by spijdar »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #29
3np wrote: post #4

More information and motivation in the git repo[0], the link to which I didn't spot easily in the site header. The main design goals are: * source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) * similar GUI metaphors and familiar UX (file manager, application launcher, top menu bar that reflects the open application, etc) * compatible with macOS filesystems (HFS+…

> source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) Hard to see how this can be done legally. The libraries (sorry, Frameworks) that make up the user-space runtime for macOS are all proprietary. There's no replacement for the most important parts of it.

Sure there are (for some definition of "most important parts). Take a look at GNUstep for a start. Some MacOS frameworks like WebKit are also open sourced from Apple itself.

As an example of how this works in practice, the disassembler/decompiler Hopper has both MacOS and Linux versions that are compiled from the same code.

Now, how successful they'll be extending the open source frameworks to made this useful in compiling non-trivial software that wasn't written with "dual compatibility" is a fair question, but the starting pieces are there, and patching the compilers and creating a copy of MacOS's filesystem layout would go a long way in making it easier to compile MacOS software on FreeBSD/GNUstep.

And in any event, so far as doing it legally, I don't see why this would be any less legal than Wine's recreation of the Win32 API/libraries. Only difference is Apple might be more litigious than Microsoft, but Microsoft doesn't exactly lie down to software theft...

Re: Airyx OS

#35

Post by Wowfunhappy »

vzaliva wrote: post #9

Projects like these will be always one step behind the thing they are trying to replicate (MacOS in this case). It is better to spend one's creative energy innovating and coming up with better solutions rather than re-implementing what Apple is doing.

Luckily, macOS was at its best ~8 years ago, so it's okay if they're behind.

Re: Airyx OS

#36

Post by cable2600 »

jhawk28 wrote: post #33
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) Hard to see how this can be done legally. The libraries (sorry, Frameworks) that make up the user-space runtime for macOS are all proprietary. There's no replacement for the most important parts of it.

You would need to reverse engineer what the frameworks are supposed to do and provide new implementations. (You can see all their external APIs) This is what Google did with Java on Android. The courts currently view this as legal (Google v Oracle).

The core of MacOS is Darwin which is open source. Based on the MACH/XNU kernel and *BSD. So any MacOS clone would start with using Darwin code.

Re: Airyx OS

#38

Post by Bilal_io »

orionblastar wrote: post #31
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) Hard to see how this can be done legally. The libraries (sorry, Frameworks) that make up the user-space runtime for macOS are all proprietary. There's no replacement for the most important parts of it.

Darwin can run limited MacOS applications provided they don't use a proprietary Apple MacOS library. Airyx is so limited and doesn't have a lot of users to be worth suing over I think.

Probably cheaper and easier for apple to kill them while small/young

Re: Airyx OS

#39

Post by bobsomers »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #29
3np wrote: post #4

More information and motivation in the git repo[0], the link to which I didn't spot easily in the site header. The main design goals are: * source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) * similar GUI metaphors and familiar UX (file manager, application launcher, top menu bar that reflects the open application, etc) * compatible with macOS filesystems (HFS+…

> source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) Hard to see how this can be done legally. The libraries (sorry, Frameworks) that make up the user-space runtime for macOS are all proprietary. There's no replacement for the most important parts of it.

> Hard to see how this can be done legally.

Why? Things like Wine and Proton exist and Windows is proprietary.

Re: Airyx OS

#40

Post by saagarjha »

cable2600 wrote: post #36
jhawk28 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to reverse engineer what the frameworks are supposed to do and provide new implementations. (You can see all their external APIs) This is what Google did with Java on Android. The courts currently view this as legal (Google v Oracle).

The core of MacOS is Darwin which is open source. Based on the MACH/XNU kernel and *BSD. So any MacOS clone would start with using Darwin code.

Emulating macOS at the Darwin layer is not necessary and often not advisable (see: GNUstep).
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