ToddBlanchard wrote:

Uh, they is them. Apple Computer *is* Next. So Apple Computer (the current one) wrote NextStep. Its a question of labels really.

Nice dance. Nice angels. Nice pin.

I think my explanation was a good bit less tortured and misleading. But have fun, and spin merrily.

Anyhow, as you note, darwin is essentially chunks of FreeBSD on Avi's Mach kernel.

I did not "note" that, and that's one of the bits of not-entirely-accurate, fluffy marketing department factoids that many MacOS users are fond of hurling about, these days.

xnu is converging somewhat on FreeBSD's kernel, thanks to recent borrowings and staff hires (Jordan et al.), and the userspace code more so. But this was not traditionally the case, Apple revisionism notwithstanding.

Anyhow, everything is proprietary. Even Linux.

Only for deliberately misleading values of the term "proprietary". In the software context, the term means unavailable under OSD-compliant terms, and thus not lawful to [link|http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/essays/forking.html|fork] under such terms. But you knew that.

My late maternal grandfather had a rather rudely profane saying about how people shouldn't micturate down his leg and try to convince him it's raining. It seems somehow appropriate, here.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com