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Comment on "Tom Yager Oversells Open Kernel Issues"
by Scott Stevenson — May 17
You must not write kernel extensions for a living if you think a closed Mac OS X kernel is tolerable

Mea culpa, then. It's a legitimate need. That said, kernel source is just treating a symptom of inadquate docs, not the real issue.

Aside from that, the potential loss here for Mac users is incalcuable. Look at the Linux kernel, and the thriving development community around it. Interesting new features get added, considered, beat into shape. Performance gets tuned. Bugs get squashed quickly.

My entire point with this post is that Mac OS X and Linux are different beasts. Just because you have an open source kernel doesn't mean you get the same sort of contributions that Linux does. The license is just mechanism.

Darwin has been out for, what, six years? How many kernel improvements have come from the community versus paid Apple employees? If the community was having a significant impact, I'd think Apple would find a way to keep the source out there.

The Linux community was born from the unix hacker community. I'd wajor most linux users know you can get the source to the kernel. How many Mac users have even heard of Darwin or xnu?

It's true that the pool of WebKit developers to draw from is wider, and the barrier to entry lower

I think this is the reason for the difference. Not only are the results a lot more tangible for the average Mac developer, but the material is a lot easier to deal with.
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