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Comment by hnlmorg

10 months ago

It’s not even as clear cut as that because there’s FreeBSD and NetBSD code in XNU too.

Also OpenStep is an API rather than an OS. So macOS contains both NextStep and OpenStep code.

I'm pretty sure I've even read about FreeBSD code in the Windows networking stack. Is Windows now based on BSD? Open source code, especially when it's permissively licensed, ends up absolutely everywhere.

OPENSTEP is the OS, OpenStep is the framework.

After NeXTSTEP 3.3 there was OPENSTEP 4.0.

OPENSTEP 4.2 is the last operating system release prior to Rhapsody.

Yes it’s confusing.

  • True. The capitalisation rules for releases kills me every time too. Not just with OpenStep but with Next too. I now don’t even bother trying to get the capitalisation correct.

    Considering how obsessed with UX that Jobs was, I don’t get how he thought the naming conventions were a good idea.

    • I believe it all came after Paul Rand did the logo.

      NeXT looks good in the logo, and they spent $100,000 on it.

      FWIW, I like it but it is confusing and made harder by the fact they also didn’t stick to their own conventions much of the time.