“I think that a GPL-ed Mac OS could provide a true alternative to several other OS’es.” -Steve Jobs, WWDC 2008.
Stand back for a moment. A Mac running on a PC, and licensed under the GPL? The truth is much stranger than fiction.
Last year, about 50 developers worked together on the Marklar project in secret. The goal of Project Marlkar was obvious: port Mac OSX to run on x86 Intel hardware. Was Apple just merely switching to a new platform? Not quite…
It turns out, 25 of those developers have been working for Marklar’s true purpose: run Mac OSX on the PC, natively. It’s under a project name many hackers know of: OSX86. Posing as various hacking teams, the Apple developers have been working on various releases, each one with more and more success.
It’s not as unbelievable as one would think. After all, Mac OSX is built directly atop Darwin, and uses NeXTStep/OpenStep libraries and concepts, most of which are under an Open Source license already. My insiders at Apple are telling me that Snow Leopard will be the “Next Step” to reaching the goal: a fully free, Open, innovative, powerful environment that mixes the best of FOSS technology, and proprietary suites.
Jobs has refused to comment fully on the details, but one thing is for certain: Mac OSX is Officially coming to the PC, and it’s going fully open.
We interviewed Scott Forstall, Apple’s VP of Platform Experience, and Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s Senior Vice-President of Software Engineering at WWDC 2008 to investigate.
Q. What do you expect to do with Snow Leopard?
Scott Forstall: We’re focusing entirely on the internal features of Snow Leopard. We’re tweaking how the hardware talks to the system, and how the system talks back to the hardware. On top of that, we’re porting it to the PC platform.
Bertrand Serlet: We’re also developing our software stack to be more robust. Ever since Panther, we’ve been working on tackling the problems with response in the system. We’ve adjusted usability to be of the highest standards, and now we’re working on interprocess communication, like Scott said.
Q. Why? Isn’t the OS for the Mac meant to stay on it’s own respective plaform?
Scott Forstall: Simply put, Apple has focused for so long on hardware sales, but now it is relying on several markets at once. The whole reason we restricted ourselves to one hardware provider was because we relied so heavily on one market. Now, Apple doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.
Q. What projects has Apple been working on to port Mac OSX?
Scott Forstall: Well, there was the Marklar Project first. It was a project we started circa 2006, and made great progress on. Because of Marklar, we were able to fully utilize the power of the Intel platform.
Bertrand Serlet: On top of that, we decided to do something different. After the success of Marklar, we started a project called OSX86. We posed as a hacker community to build up a small experimental following. So far, it’s been extremely popular. It’s practically what the users want.
Q. So, will Apple continue to make hardware after the port to the PC?
Scott Forstall: Most certainly. Just because we’ve extended to other platforms doesn’t mean we won’t sell high-quality hardware. Besides, we’ll be seeing profit from other software, and well as building up our great community even more.
Bertrand Serlet: Exactly. We’ll still sell proprietary packages, such as the iLife suite. It’s just the OS itself that will be undergoing an Open Source license.
Q. What’s all these rumors about Mac OS 11?
Scott Forstall: In all honesty, there’s nothing to the whole “OS11″ craze. We’ve developed a few concepts, but it’s not even on the roadmap yet.
Bertrand Serlet: The proposed “mockups” and “screencasts” out there are nothing more than a few custom themes and effects.
Q. Will Apple users feel cheated because their OS is on non-Apple hardware?
Scott Forstall: I don’t think so. I think they’d understand that Apple’s worked very hard on providing quality to the users, and that’s what we’re all about.
Q. Thanks for sitting down with us, you guys. Is there anything else you’d like to bring up?
Scott Forstall: Just that we hope you’ll keep your eyes peeled for the official releases.
Bertrand Serlet: Definitely. I think that it’s great that we have so many users interested in our Open Source strategies.
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