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Comment by TACIXAT | Hacker News Reader

What did Mac OS build off of? Would that be possible without OSS? Same for the large web services. How far would any of those companies have gotten without open source?

No one is arguing that unfunded projects will kick the ass of funded ones. However, innovation that can be shared will produce more innovation.

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>Would that be possible without OSS?

In the case of Mac OS, probably. UNIX licenses are available and it's not like Apple has exactly turned Darwin into a vibrant open source community.

As far as large web and cloud services more broadly? It would certainly be a much different world.

Mac OS came from Mach, an open source microkernel from CMU in the 80s. Although Objective-C was originally proprietary, NeXT implemented it on GCC and open sourced it.

The origin of modern MacOS/iOS is definitely open source.

Absolutely. My point was that, absent open source alternatives, Mac OS [EDIT: OS X specifically] could have been created on top of a proprietary UNIX. The lack of open source Unix alternatives would likely not have had much of an impact on Mac OS and certainly Apple hasn't taken advantage of the open source development model for Mac OS.

> Mac OS came from Mach

I believe you mean OS X, not MacOS.

Apple could switch OS X to entirely proprietary underpinnings and few customers would even notice. In fact, OpenStep ran just fine on top of NT. [And also on top of then-non-open Solaris].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep

OS X = MacOS.

Apple confusingly renamed OS X to MacOS a few years ago.

obnoxiously, it's actually macOS, not MacOS.

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