from the faq:
> Is this... legally sketchy?
No. Consider projects like ReactOS, a from-scratch effort to create an OS compatible with Microsoft Windows, GNUstep, which provides an open implementation of Cocoa APIs and other things, or Darling, a compatibility layer for running Darwin (macOS) binaries on Linux. ravynOS is similar and stands on the shoulders of many such projects.
as far as i understand it, most companies don’t bother sending cease and desists to projects you’ve never heard of. the fact that the aforementioned projects have avoided the banhammer of Apple should not be an indication that a successful MacOS clone would receive the same treatment.
but on the other hand, maybe that’s a champagne problem. if you can make a macos clone good enough to get the attention of Apple, you’ve already done something incredible.
I think the better example is actually GNU, which endured several challenges as a clean room implementation of unix. I think this is legally sound, but IANAL.
Imagine the world where open-source is collaborating instead of fragmenting. Single Linux distribution, single compartibility layer for other OSes, single graphics API, single package manager...
I wager that maybe, probably, possibly, perhaps the GUI of this thing looks like ass and feels even worse. There used to be screenshots, you can google them. But maybe don’t.
> Developers can port existing Cocoa applications with minimal changes.
I wonder how big the actual gap between close to Cocoa App compatibility and full app compatibility is? Being able to run MacOS apps natively would unlock a huge barrier to adoption here.
Everyone gets to name their projects for their own reasons. If the pitch is basically an “alternate apple” macOS, I would have chosen one of the other other (alternate) apple varieties as the root of my OS. Missed opportunity I guess.
Real apple-people would'nt consider this anyways. Open source geeks is were they can get traction. Seems like there is plenty of us that would like fbsd quality and vertical integration to the desktop level. There is effort but no breakthroughs.
There used to be a bootable Darwin instance that Apple published, which on paper would've made things a bit easier, but they stopped publishing it a while ago. It never resulted in any serious OS with a UI however.
There was a community around Darwin for a while, and people released Darwin distros that ran X11 and a variety of ported Unix software. You’re right that it never really amounted to anything serious though. Within Apple, open sourcing Darwin seems to mainly have been a marketing ploy to get Unix/Linux people interested in Mac OS X by tying it to the hype around the open source movement. There’s a good article with more information here: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html
By referencing the 90s it is a reminder that Mac started on an entirely closed source kernel. It's a regression towards the Mac mean more than a regression away from it.
Correct, but to dismiss the NeXT contributions from BSD into modern mac and Darwin would be to dismiss Darwin entirely. Macintosh from the System7 days was a dramatically different beast.
The Mac GUI is closed source. You're not cloning it without being sued by Apple's turbo lawyers or at the very least receive a C&D. This is for console applications?
macOS will now be ARM-only. If you buy Apple hardware you already have a license for the real thing.
Why run a TBD meme OS when you could run Darwin, FreeBSD, Linux, etc. or real macOS to accomplish whatever unclear goals are presented here?
*sigh* This is for no one, there is no viable use case. The ReactOS team will be sending a fruit basket.
Perhaps the biggest reason is that the existing FOSS OS world has little to offer for people who like a Mac-style desktop. It's possible to customize DEs to have a very shallow visual resemblance but the details are all wrong, with Windows, legacy Linux desktops, and even mobile operating systems (in e.g. the case of GNOME) exerting the greater bulk of design influence.
The question might then, "why not make this a DE instead?" to which the answer is that Mac users also like how the underpinnings of the OS work (or have worked in older releases) and would like to continue to use their favorite Mac apps, which isn't going to happen as long as any traditional Linux distribution is involved. Mac apps also have a design ethos that's rare among current native Linux apps, which drives demand for alternatives.
To do this properly it really needs to be a whole-OS endeavor.
EndeavorOS. I think it's actually the userspace though, which this aims to emulate. The problem is that if you're using a macbook for final cut pro, then endeavorOS doesn't solve your problem.
I haven't downloaded or played with it because I'd rather not toy with software so obviously full of landmines, but from what I've seen it also falls into the "surface level" bucket. It goes a little further than one might get by e.g. enabling KDE's global menubar and installing one of the Mac-themed Breeze forks, but not much.
That's what this is. Darwin isn't installable today. Apple just dumps a bunch of source code. Previous attempts at making Darwin bootable didn't go far and had no GUI.
Four years and still pre-alpha. Stick a fork in it.
There's also PureDarwin (?) which had been around forever but last I recall the lone developer was seriously ill and the project was not receiving help. I don't see how this would be any different.
To everyone here cheering this on: when will you be contributing? Or are you just waiting to download it, run it once for the lulz, and drag it to the Trash?
why do anything? why Linux? why FreeBSD? why Mac at all? Why build your own wind turbine when corporations make large ones? Why build a cyclekart when you own a car? Why workout when everyone's going to die?
With that mindset, everything is useless and nothing has a point. Have I made my point?
I regret to actually say this, and mean no controversy - but, I have been actually asking myself just that - and, not in the "workout or not" sense, alone. In the "does anything have a point", way. Apologies.-
PS. To indeed contribute something: I am a big fan of the "doing things because of the joy of doing things" itself theory of it all, which is, seemingly, an antidote.-
In general, things have meaning because people assign meanings to them. Nothing inherently has meaning as meaning exists only within the human mind/soul. If you are searching for meaning, you will find nothing.
"This is a huge effort. Y'all must be crazy!
Yes. Here's to the crazy ones... because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.
In all seriousness, though, it's not my first rodeo. I have no illusions about the scale of building an OS or how long projects like Haiku, ReactOS or GNUStep took to get usable. This is just something I like doing in my Copious Spare Time™ and that I hope will be useful someday.
I've always liked Apple's design and elegance, but am not thrilled with the direction of recent macOS® or how closed the hardware has become. And I'm a big believer in open source. So ... let's build something that feels as elegant, without all the lock-in, and maybe (just maybe) I can get it to a point that reasonably useful Mac apps build & run on it. And if not, we'll build a lot of cool pieces along the way and learn a ton. I'm OK with that."
from the faq: > Is this... legally sketchy? No. Consider projects like ReactOS, a from-scratch effort to create an OS compatible with Microsoft Windows, GNUstep, which provides an open implementation of Cocoa APIs and other things, or Darling, a compatibility layer for running Darwin (macOS) binaries on Linux. ravynOS is similar and stands on the shoulders of many such projects.
as far as i understand it, most companies don’t bother sending cease and desists to projects you’ve never heard of. the fact that the aforementioned projects have avoided the banhammer of Apple should not be an indication that a successful MacOS clone would receive the same treatment.
but on the other hand, maybe that’s a champagne problem. if you can make a macos clone good enough to get the attention of Apple, you’ve already done something incredible.
I think the core of this is google vs oracle case. I think they'll be in the clear unless they hit some specific (design?) patents.
I think the better example is actually GNU, which endured several challenges as a clean room implementation of unix. I think this is legally sound, but IANAL.
Related. Others?
New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45997212 - Nov 2025 (165 comments)
RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38485596 - Dec 2023 (176 comments)
RavynOS – Finesse of macOS, freedom of FreeBSD - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492514 - Aug 2022 (366 comments)
Imagine the world where open-source is collaborating instead of fragmenting. Single Linux distribution, single compartibility layer for other OSes, single graphics API, single package manager...
I think any desktop operating systems has to present itself with at least a single screenshot. Why not one in the entire page?
And now that I have walked over the whole website: Why not a single screenshot anywhere?
I wager that maybe, probably, possibly, perhaps the GUI of this thing looks like ass and feels even worse. There used to be screenshots, you can google them. But maybe don’t.
And, perhaps (?), that ties in with the GUI being the most proprietary thing here, thus, them building that last/less or wanting to de-emphasize it?
> Developers can port existing Cocoa applications with minimal changes.
I wonder how big the actual gap between close to Cocoa App compatibility and full app compatibility is? Being able to run MacOS apps natively would unlock a huge barrier to adoption here.
Everyone gets to name their projects for their own reasons. If the pitch is basically an “alternate apple” macOS, I would have chosen one of the other other (alternate) apple varieties as the root of my OS. Missed opportunity I guess.
Real apple-people would'nt consider this anyways. Open source geeks is were they can get traction. Seems like there is plenty of us that would like fbsd quality and vertical integration to the desktop level. There is effort but no breakthroughs.
Good luck! There are many attempts at doing something similar. We can't really see anything to judge it by, yet.
Would be nice to have a screenshot in the overview page
>but we're not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem
What has changed about Apple's ecosystem vis a vis openness, hardware, or the 'ecosystem'?
The macOS ecosystem is pretty much the same as it has been since 1997
a lot of the kernel extensions are closed source proprietary. The core is still open but a lot of what makes modern Mac, Mac, are those kexts.
how has that changed over the past 20 years? the proprietary parts of Mac OS X and now macOS have been proprietary from the beginning
There used to be a bootable Darwin instance that Apple published, which on paper would've made things a bit easier, but they stopped publishing it a while ago. It never resulted in any serious OS with a UI however.
There was a community around Darwin for a while, and people released Darwin distros that ran X11 and a variety of ported Unix software. You’re right that it never really amounted to anything serious though. Within Apple, open sourcing Darwin seems to mainly have been a marketing ploy to get Unix/Linux people interested in Mac OS X by tying it to the hype around the open source movement. There’s a good article with more information here: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html
By referencing the 90s it is a reminder that Mac started on an entirely closed source kernel. It's a regression towards the Mac mean more than a regression away from it.
Correct, but to dismiss the NeXT contributions from BSD into modern mac and Darwin would be to dismiss Darwin entirely. Macintosh from the System7 days was a dramatically different beast.
صباح
What, exactly, is the point of this?
The Mac GUI is closed source. You're not cloning it without being sued by Apple's turbo lawyers or at the very least receive a C&D. This is for console applications?
macOS will now be ARM-only. If you buy Apple hardware you already have a license for the real thing.
Why run a TBD meme OS when you could run Darwin, FreeBSD, Linux, etc. or real macOS to accomplish whatever unclear goals are presented here?
*sigh* This is for no one, there is no viable use case. The ReactOS team will be sending a fruit basket.
Perhaps the biggest reason is that the existing FOSS OS world has little to offer for people who like a Mac-style desktop. It's possible to customize DEs to have a very shallow visual resemblance but the details are all wrong, with Windows, legacy Linux desktops, and even mobile operating systems (in e.g. the case of GNOME) exerting the greater bulk of design influence.
The question might then, "why not make this a DE instead?" to which the answer is that Mac users also like how the underpinnings of the OS work (or have worked in older releases) and would like to continue to use their favorite Mac apps, which isn't going to happen as long as any traditional Linux distribution is involved. Mac apps also have a design ethos that's rare among current native Linux apps, which drives demand for alternatives.
To do this properly it really needs to be a whole-OS endeavor.
EndeavorOS. I think it's actually the userspace though, which this aims to emulate. The problem is that if you're using a macbook for final cut pro, then endeavorOS doesn't solve your problem.
Didn't the Best Koreans rip off the Mac GUI in their home-grown spyware-laden Linux distro? Red Star Linux or whatever it's called.
I wonder if they have a GitHub...
I haven't downloaded or played with it because I'd rather not toy with software so obviously full of landmines, but from what I've seen it also falls into the "surface level" bucket. It goes a little further than one might get by e.g. enabling KDE's global menubar and installing one of the Mac-themed Breeze forks, but not much.
> when you could run Darwin
That's what this is. Darwin isn't installable today. Apple just dumps a bunch of source code. Previous attempts at making Darwin bootable didn't go far and had no GUI.
Four years and still pre-alpha. Stick a fork in it.
There's also PureDarwin (?) which had been around forever but last I recall the lone developer was seriously ill and the project was not receiving help. I don't see how this would be any different.
To everyone here cheering this on: when will you be contributing? Or are you just waiting to download it, run it once for the lulz, and drag it to the Trash?
> Four years and still pre-alpha. Stick a fork in it.
Who jammed a toe in your cheerios?
What will you personally be contributing to the project to help move things along?
Besides accolades on HN of course.
I'm being real here and frankly blind, empty support of open-source projects does zero to support them.
I'm actually the head lead developer in chief president. Now, your cheerios?
I dunno you could definitely do a "wine but for macos" kind of implementation, e.g., https://www.darlinghq.org/ without breaking IP laws
I've always been shocked by the lengths of time people will commit to proving wrong the folks who tell them "you can't do that."
why do anything? why Linux? why FreeBSD? why Mac at all? Why build your own wind turbine when corporations make large ones? Why build a cyclekart when you own a car? Why workout when everyone's going to die?
With that mindset, everything is useless and nothing has a point. Have I made my point?
> Why workout when everyone's going to die?
I regret to actually say this, and mean no controversy - but, I have been actually asking myself just that - and, not in the "workout or not" sense, alone. In the "does anything have a point", way. Apologies.-
PS. To indeed contribute something: I am a big fan of the "doing things because of the joy of doing things" itself theory of it all, which is, seemingly, an antidote.-
In general, things have meaning because people assign meanings to them. Nothing inherently has meaning as meaning exists only within the human mind/soul. If you are searching for meaning, you will find nothing.
... or flowers for the grave? :)
PS: The FAQ speaks to this somewhat: