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Comment by jorgecastillo | Hacker News Reader

http://opensource.apple.com/

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Maybe you're trying to say that, yes, there are a hell of a lot of serious roadblocks?

He's responding to your first comment

I want to see the source to the ls command? ... I have no idea how to do that on MacOS.

The rest have been addressed, but as for this:

The equivalent on MacOS involves signing up for a developer account with Apple, signing a contract that promises God knows what, and downloading a multi-gigabyte disk image.

It involves running an installer from your install disc, or, admittedly, in the case of the most recent release, downloading a multi-gigabyte disk image from the app store. You don't need a developer account if you just want to install the software.

So the answer to "How do I find the source to the ls command?" is "click around a web site perusing long lists of packages, trying one after another in an effort to figure out which one the ls command is from, then manually download nine files one by one from http://opensource.apple.com/source/file_cmds/file_cmds-212/l...? Is that a fucking joke? If that's your idea of fun, go ahead, but I have a computer to do that kind of thing for me. I have an operating system with package management, not a hobby.

> You don't need a developer account if you just want to install the software.

Perhaps this has changed since the last time I did it, a couple of years ago; it did then.

(On further examination, a few clicks on the Back button get me to a place where there's an image that links to a tarball of file_cmds!)

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