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Darwin is already open source, albeit Apple does a code dump every few years iirc: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

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Darwin doesn't even remotely resemble MacOS. It's the kernel and open-sourced user-land components. It resembles(but is not at all) a very old FreeBSD-ish system if loaded.

Just out of curiosity, what else if not the kernel would be interesting to copy from MacOS? I use a Mac but just don't have the inclination to learn about it under the hood (unlike Linux). Besides the various apps they include and the graphical / window system, I can think of LaunchD, drivers, but not much more that would be worth a lot to China.

Good high-level mental mode, but it's not a clean separation like that.

Think Open Source Android vs. Google's Android, or Chromium vs. Chrome. It's not just dragging and dropping some UI libraries on top. There's a ton of glue, and sticking shims into non-obvious places that make a lot of the magic happen.

The Darwin kernel is worthless because any free Unix is better. The graphical stuff is the whole reason macOS exists.

Darwin is just one piece of the puzzle. macOS is much more than it's kernel.

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