I think someone with direct ties to Steve Jobs would have to talk to him directly. Legal departments usually try to block stuff like this.

Still, the source code to Executor, the Mac "emulator" which works by reimplementing the toolbox, may be interesting. See http://github.com/ctm/executor .

The problem is it's not just Apple's source code in there. They licenced technology from other companies, so their permission would be needed. 1000 years later and the lawyers would still be at it.

The best bet would be to try to reverse-engineer a modern iteration like Haiku is doing with BeOS.

I think that's where the issue of Executor comes in. You could make a modern version of AUX. It could be based on another OS, i.e. linux or netbsd, and have a Mac like user interface that would allow the execution of Mac programs on command. The advantage of Executor is it would be hardware agnostic, since it includes a 68k emulator. As executor is really only System 6, it would take a lot of work to get it to be the level of OS 9, in terms of Mac OS compatibility. But, by basing it off of an existing modern OS you would be getting all the extras for free.

BTW, I would live to see the internals of the classic mac os. Just to be able to look at them would be cool in my opinion.

I reember the source for System 7 appearing on the (early) interbet for a short while. I had a look at it, it was interesting.
I also remember the source for parts of the OS9 appearing on the internet (again, briefly). It was a nightmare.
It's probably one of the main reasons Apple went with OSX. OS9 just didn't offer any scalability or cost-effective upgradability. I'm sure that there will be parts of it still available, somewhere.

I tried to find OS 7 but couldn't. I would still like to look at that.

I don't think it's something you're going to find with Google. A good start may be trying to find the news articles it produced. MacUser or MacWorld may have something on it.

http://www.pagetable.com/?p=50 -- original Inside Macintosh Volumes 1, 2, and 3
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/mac/ -- Misc. Apple documents and information

They licenced technology from other companies, so their permission would be needed.

From the little I know, the vast majority of Apple's code was not licensed from other companies.

I have the Inside Mac books. I just would like to see the internals of the OS. Just like to see how people have implemented the operating system.

Without doubt this would be great for the whole remaining OS 9 community but I somehow doubt today's Apple would release the source. But hey - maybe as someone wrote above a direct link to Mr. Jobs could help. Anyone here with connections?

There is still a petition online for Mac OS 8, which can be found at Petitiononline.com,
but, badly, was not heard by Apple, Inc.

The legit source code of System 7.1 is out there. Not sure if it's 100% complete, but... Look around on KDX.

@amatecha: Can't talk too much about it because of apple legal ...

Thanks for the response amatecha, but I have decided its not a good idea. I would like to recreate a AUX like system using a modification of executor. If I do that, the project, not just me, could have legal problems. You know, destroying the clean room, in clean room implementation.

Executor is fine. It was a clean room reimplementation and is open source.

That's a well written petition, and the first I've heard about it. Thanks for posting that.

I don't believe that it's asking too much, especially from the loyal consumers who helped make Apple what it is today.

@Balrog, I just want to keep it that way. I'm afraid if I start digging around in internal apple code, even if it was accidentally released, could compromise the project.

Maybe you misunderstood. Executor is NOT internal Apple code at all. It's a clean room implementation of portions of the Toolbox. Back in the day it was sold as an emulator, and was superior to others in the fact that an Apple ROM image wasn't needed.

Recently, the author made Executor open source and it's available at the github repository I linked earlier.

Again just to be clear: Executor is NOT internal Apple code.

Right. The conversation drifted towards getting the code for system 7.1, which would be internal apple code. I am thinking about using the executor code in a project. I don't want to risk looking at internal code before I start messing with executor. Apple could then have a claim that I used internal code to improve or change the code of executor.

Yes, Yes it would. My first focus is turning the Executor system into more of an operating system. Something that seamlessly boots to a finder like interface that can run System 6 apps "natively". Which is no mean feat. Once that is up and running, future releases would up compatibility to OS 9. Then maybe extend it further like what Haiku is doing. If it works out, it could turn into a revitalisation of Classic Mac OS. Keep the dream alive, so to speak.

Its a very ambitious project. If there was interest out there we could try and start a project. Get a group of developers together.

Wow, it seams that I have posted pretty much exactly what the OP did. I guess it helps to reread the discussion every once in a while

What goes around, comes around.

But anyways. I think we might have quite a bit of information that we could use to at least start an open source mac replacement. Is there any interest?

It's an interesting discussion for theory. But how much time and effort do you want to spend creating an OS for a platform for which there are no apps.
And then you find that it's already been done ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/05/star-trek-mac-os-intel.html
http://news.cnet.com/New-life-for-the-old-Star-Trek-project/2100-1045_3-...

Cool beans bertyboy, I never heard about that. As for this...

"and the two companies immediately began working together on a project that came to be called Star Trek, because it would boldly go where no Mac had gone before: the Intel platform. When Bill Gates heard of Apple's plan to put the Mac OS on an Intel machine, he responded by saying it would be "like putting lipstick on a chicken."

I think Bill was dead wrong with that analogy. It would be more like putting a dress on a pig.

(Just a note, none of my comments are meant in a mean or upseting way. I really enjoy lively discussion and don't mean to offend anyone. No one in my vicinity think my writing is particularly offensive, but you might disagree with my German Shepard.)

I have read about Star Trek before, but have no access to an actual system.

With using a program like Executor as a basis, it would open up almost all of the System 6 library, as it contains both a Toolbox implementation as well as a 68k emulator.

Even Classic in OS X is not an option as it is already legacy and not supported any more. The point is to create a new classic mac os that will eventually add in features that were not there.

I know it will be a huge undertaking. There have been other projects like this that have failed. A replacement for OS/2 comes to mind. As well as some that seem to be stalled. It is fairly likely that the project will fail.

Haiku is more of a exception, than a rule. I think it is succeeding in two ways. First it has a large group of very dedicated developers that for one reason or another want to continue to use BeOS. Secondly it has managed to convert a few users into zealots. I, being a convert, would use it on a more regular basis if I had a supported machine I could run it on that wasn't dedicated to business. That's what I get for having way too many Macs and Unix workstations.

Its actually a project I have been thinking about doing for some time now. I may have even talked about it here before. I have always thought about it in more of a revitalisation of AUX.

I really like the Classic Mac OS user experience. I also like the idea of extending Classic Mac OS in a direction that Apple chose not to go. As I realise over time that there is more to the world than my cubicle, I find myself with time to actually pursue this, as well as other projects.

I guess the bottom line is this: Do I or anyone else think that Classic Mac OS is worth preserving in an open source/free reincarnation? Or should it stay theory and work on preserving through emulators like SheepShaver, BasilliskII and Mini VMac.

Either way it is my opinion it needs to be preserved. Which is why I love this site.

I like the dress on a pig reference. Comparing the original mac to the original pc is not like comparing apples to oranges, but more like the Mona Lisa to the crappy drawings my mom put on the fridge when I was a kid:)

Well its not really that bad. I have done a little work with designing a computer and its not easy. So the IBM engineers deserve a little more respect than my analogy, but just a little:)

I don't remember how they did it in Star Trek, if it had a emulator, or if it needed to have the programs recompiled. Either way has its problems. As I recall early Mac programs were pretty hardware specific.

If you think its worth pursuing, then I think the first logical step is to set a clear list of goals. Spell out what Nueve should be. And document it.

Re Star Trek

It was recompiled code of course. A slightly modified code base with custom headers for x86 that removed all the dependencies on the Apple ROM chip, which was also recoded and loaded into RAM at boot time.
This part survived and was to becme the 'New World' Macs, starting with the iMac.

Star Trek should be the holy grail for Macintosh Garden. Unfortunately, we'd have to keep it a secret if we ever came across it.

I guess thats the big difference between Star Trek and what I am suggesting. I would have a 68k emulator built in, at least at first. Then add a PPC emulator. Too bad we can't look at Rosetta

AFAIK Star Trek did require recompiling software.

Look at existing open source projects for ideas and even code. There's plenty going on in the Linux area and a lot of that is already open-source — why re-invent the wheel?

I am actually looking at using GRUB as a boot loader and use OSKIT to handle a lot of the kernel. I will need to add HFS support, so looking at Linux's hfs stuff is a must. Balrog, I totally agree with your statements. There is an old adage that I think applies

Good writers borrow from other writers, great writers steal outright.

The big issue to keep in mind when doing this is licensing. I am not a big fan of the GPL, I actually find it limiting. I like BSD or MIT style a bit better. That's my opinion though.

As long as there is no excellent DTP program available with typographic quality comparable to InDesign forget about a new operating system. DTP is the test, always, because it's high and and for professionals. Look at Linux; it has Scribus. But I doubt that the typography of Sribus is comparable to InDesign. Does anybody know anything about this?

And also, you definitely need something that makes PDFs in the quality of Adobe Acrobat for the workflow of print shops. If you cannot provide this, forget it! Does Linux actually have that?

I don't mind the GPL, and at long as there's no linking or direct incorporation of GPL code, portions can be GPL while other (non-linked) portions can be MIT or BSD-licensed.

As for PDFs, GhostScript does a great job but is a library and doesn't have a pretty interface. A program that uses GhostScript properly can do a lot with PDFs.

I would totally disagree with that statement.

I don't care at all about desktop publishing. I am a developer by hobby and trade. So for me the crucible is decent development tools.

Also it was quite a while before Scribus was created. Compared to the creation of linux. Linux, despite what others say, is a "for real" operating system. It has been used as a robust server OS for a long time and is gaining momentum as a Desktop OS. I use it as my Dev machine for work and have so for close to a year now.

For that matter where is the DTP for Solaris and Irix. Both operating systems are used for high end graphics and engineering work.

Besides the point is that the system I describe would be a replacement for Mac OS. So from my perspective one of the goals is the ability to run Mac OS programs.

My comments are directed towards xy.

Couldn't type fast enough.

Can nowadays Ghostscript embed all PS fonts as Acrobat 5 can? I sometimes use an old version of Ghostscript (v7 or 8 I believe) which works on Mac OS 9; it can embed almost no fonts. It's good for making PDFs from OzTeX files or fonts though, something Acrobat 5 many times fails in.

@rpangrazio:
I don't know if you've used OS X much, but I'm pretty happy with it. Great development system, nice dev tools (and Xcode 4 is awesome!) ... even though it IS different from classic Mac OS. 10.5 and more recently 10.6 really fixed most of the bugs in the early versions.

It looks possible
http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/grDevices/html/embedFonts.html

Balrog,

I haven't had much chance to use Xcode. But I agree it looks great. I just know there are a lot of hobby OS's that don't offer much of native tool chains. In my mind you have to be able to write programs on the operating system for the operating system. At least in the general purpose OS realm. Embedded OS's are a seperate issue.

well I'm referring to Mac OS, not iOS (which is pretty much a scaled-down Mac OS).

In my mind you have to be able to write programs on the operating system for the operating system.

That's never going to happen at first! eventually, yes it should be possible.

Also, GhostScript (and open-source software in general) has gone quite far lately. Many advancements have been made.

If Nueve means being able to boot Mac OS 9.2.2 and all its apps without emulation on a PC that would be great as old hardware wears out. Also it would be great to have printer drivers. I think Brother is the last company that sells new printers with Mac OS 9 printer drivers.