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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

>Does anyone even SELL commercial Unix anymore?

Apple.

And before anyone says yes well but it runs a proprietary application layer so it doesn't count, it also runs all the open ones too just fine. The fact it's barely used for that despite a massive user base (by Unix standards) is hardly Apple's problem, or fault even. It just goes to show how deeply and thoroughly the open source software community has failed in getting the vast majority of ordinary people to care about open source desktop software. Even when all the barriers to access are completely eliminated.

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edit:lay blame where it ought

Rarely have there been such obvious and one-sided manipulation of public source repos on strictly licensed code, as have been published by Apple Inc. It appears that they go out of their way to insult and dismiss any "power" over the code itself, like a steering committee especially, but as simple as an open repo maintainer.

There is simply no profit in making current, working source code available in the same way as a published book at a public library is.. and so there is infinite Chutzpah at Apple Inc to say, not our affair. There is no way that current active source code works the way it is supposed to, if you cannot find it, build it, change it and thereby learn it and apply it.

Emperor Apple has no clothes here

Apple has a certified UNIX, macOS. macOS 12 and many earlier versions certified by TOG as a UNIX product along with AIX, HP-UX, and SCO OpenServer.

Also, Apple's kernel (XNU) is somewhat open-source. Apple isn't really interested in contributions, but you can build it yourself and install it, and macOS will boot and run from it (the main exception being iOS apps on Apple Silicon, maybe Apple Pay, and FileVault gets disabled to make the modification and inability to fully secure your system obvious, those parts are closed source kernel extensions, but they aren't dealbreakers).

I'm not "apologisting" anything, it's just a statement of fact. I make no claims about any ethical dimension to Apple's activities, if you dislike their practices I won't argue with you. The question was about commercial Unix, and MacOS is commercial Unix just as much as Solaris, AIX, etc.

> The question was about commercial Unix, and MacOS is commercial Unix just as much as Solaris, AIX, etc.

Precisely. For those attempting to deny this, He's right you know.

macOS is a commercial and certified Unix and is still sold as part of their Macs. So that is still true to this day.

Ok, fair. I guess what I mean is more "for use in the datacenter."

I believe Apple is based on FreeBSD, not Unix.

MacOS is a certified Unix. See [1] [2].

[1] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3673.htm

[2] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3678.htm

Interesting. I wasn't aware that Unix is a standard - I thought it was a codebase. Thanks!

FreeBSD is literally based directly off of AT&T Unix versions 5, 6, and 7 (in varying capacities).

AT&T Unix -> BSD -> FreeBSD -> NeXTSTEP -> macOS. (This is overly simplified, as everything is a mess and macOS contains code from both FreeBSD and original BSD which FreeBSD was based on, among other places.)

macOS is ironically a more authentic Unix than Linux is, Linux having been a clone while macOS being a great grandchild.

Diagram of Unix History: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_his...

Linux is not Unix and it is not developed to be one.

Not to be that guy, but isn't BSD and it's derivatives still Unix derived so parent's comment still holds? (Though to the parent comment I'd argue that OSX isn't really a sold OS either because I can't buy just it)

It is, but my (inartfully phrased) question would still count it.

what I meant, though, was "for the datacenter" or "for server applications."

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