Comment by mixdup
14 hours ago
The premise of that article is way off base. Darwin didn't fail, because the point wasn't to create a robust open source operating system along the lines of Linux. Apple got everything they needed from the OSS community while providing no more than they were required to. Apple got a bunch of tools, utilities, shells, etc as well as a view that this was a Real UNIX Operating System (TM) (they even got it certified) and that inarguably sold millions of machines
Their goal was never to build a community around Darwin or get a bunch of people outside the company using Darwin sans Mac OS X's proprietary bits, or to get a bunch of people outside the company contributing to Darwin
You are describing the premise of the article.
> The problem was Darwin was a marketing ploy, and nothing more. Marketing thought that by throwing some source files over the wall, they could increase their market share and revenue. And they were right. You go to almost any technical conference these days, and there is an astonishing number of Mac laptops in the crowd. Prior to Mac OS X, people would have been laughed out of the building for having a Mac, but now, with Mac OS X and the magic of open source, it was suddenly OK or even cool. Managerially and culturally, Apple had no intention of becoming involved with any community outside its own walls. There were some well intentioned engineers and even a few low level managers that were duped by their own marketing department, and that was all. These people had given substantial amounts of their free time under the illusion they were doing something Right, something Good, but in the end were simply used by their own company's marketing department.
Except the premise is that it was a failure. It wasn't, it accomplished exactly what they set out to do