I know it’s not a new idea, but I think it’s ripe for additional
consideration: Apple should
Open Source Mac OS 9. I don’t imagine it’s an idea they’d give much
thought to, but I can see several benefits that might be worth
considering. First off, as the one major company that has benefited
the most from the Open Source movement, Apple has the largest
responsibility to give something back. The Darwin kernel is nice, but
I’ve never noticed anyone joyfully dancing in the street over it.

Open Sourcing OS 9 would be a major step, as it would be the largest
piece of commercial software to undergo that transformation. And though
it’s legendarily kludgy, OS 9 evolved from the first commercial GUI,
and might well have a lot of things to teach the Open Source world
about the design and implementation of user interfaces. Of course,
Apple’s immediate reaction would be to see such a move as a threat to
their new flagship, OS X. In reality, I would anticipate an open OS 9
moving more into the territory of traditional *nix and Windows space.
Somebody with modern Mac hardware would hardly want to bother with a
virtual machine, or some other abstraction layer, though some decent
boot loaders have been developed for those who run Linux on their Macs.
A dual-boot system would be pretty feasible, though I wouldn’t imagine
many people would abandon OS X to move backward in time.

On the other hand, to my mind, OS 9 is still a leap forward in
straightforwardness, ease of use, and short learning curve from either
Linux or Windows. What 9 has over X is simply a very low resource
requirement. I know there are those who love Linux for its nearly
infinite flexibility, but there’s just too much to learn for me to
bother. I’ve tried several installs, and it’s just not simple enough. I
don’t want to have to swap brains to go from managing my system to
doing my daily work. For me, an ideal server OS would be based on the
simple, effective interface of OS 9, utilizing the control panel
modules to set server settings and protocols and such. If the Open
Source community were given the chance, I’m sure 9 could be stripped
down to the bare walls, made even more efficient, and much more solid
at the kernel level. Upon that, one could choose to run various other
levels of services and abilities depending on networking style,
application needs, and eye candy preferences. Being able to install all
of this on a minimal system would be the icing on the cake. I’ve got a
couple of old Macs sitting around along with an old Gateway, all of
which would be perfectly useful if there was an OS around that had both
the low system requirements and the low learning curve to make it worth
my time to dust them off and pull them out of the closet.

From Apple’s point of view I don’t see a losing side. Open Sourcing OS
9 would breathe new life into old beige Macs that are reaching the
status of paperweights. It would put the Mac OS into the forefront in a
whole new way. It would demonstrate Apple to be giving back to the
community from which they have gained so much. Finally, the tinkers and
tweakers would have a reason to get into the Mac platform. PowerPC Macs
can be had on eBay for low double-digit dollars, and the chance to
really get into them and put them to new and creative uses would likely
result in Macs being brought into many new homes. As the iPod has
demonstrated, people will make the leap from buying your toys to buying
your tools, and that first toy Mac OS based machine could build inroads
for the latest and greatest the company has to offer.