Apple Releases Intel Kernel Source — Still Not a Big Deal

OK, so we have Apple releasing the Intel Kernel Source. Does this mean that they are rethinking some things? Perhaps not…

Apple finally got around to releasing the source code to Mac OS X 10.4.7 kernel, according to developer mailing list contributor Ernest Prabhakar.

And it still doesn’t matter.

The kernel on OS X is much less tweakable and customizable for performance than the monolithic kernels that other Unix-derived operating systems such as the BSDs and Linux. Rob Braun, formerly of the late, lamented OpenDarwin Project, was one of the very few people outside of Apple to ever successfully build his own version of the kernel from the released source.

More to the point, all the hysteria about Apple closing OS X is still hysteria. Darwin is not and never has been equivalent to OS X. You’re still not going to download some source code somewhere, start compiling and wake up with Leopard installed on your Dell — unless you’re an Apple software engineer with a strange sense of humor. Source: blog.wired.com