FAQ

No - not yet. This is a major goal and we're working towards it. So far, some trivial "Hello World" binaries in C and Objective-C have been compiled on macOS Big Sur and the resulting Mach-O binaries ran on ravynOS using our in-dev Hybrid linker without any Frameworks or tools from macOS. Source code of some simple Cocoa AppKit-based applications have been built on ravynOS and run as native applications (e.g. Install ravynOS.app). While this is all very exciting, you will have to wait a bit longer to run Photoshop or Xcode.

No. Consider projects like ReactOS, a from-scratch effort to create an OS compatible with Microsoft Windows, GNUstep, which provides an open implementation of Cocoa APIs and other things, or Darling, a compatibility layer for running Darwin (macOS) binaries on Linux. ravynOS is similar and stands on the shoulders of many such projects.

All code used is freely available under open source licenses. No proprietary elements like fonts, icons, trademarks, etc can be used. Original code must be written using "clean room" techniques - that is, from public documentation like developer guides by people who have never seen the proprietary code - and released under the FreeBSD license or the MIT license.

The goal is to use a small core set of languages as much as possible: the "C" family (C, C++, Objective-C, and Objective-C++), Swift, Python, Java, and shell scripts. This should cover most needs.

Great! Take a look at the issues list to find something that interests you, or contact mszoek.

Absolutely! There will be art, documentation, testing, UX and UI work, release management, project management, legal advice, hosting, and many other ways to contribute. This project is huge and help is very welcome. Check out the issues for ideas on how to contribute, or contact mszoek.

You sure can! I've signed up for GitHub Sponsors to make monthly sponsorship easy. You can also make a contribution via PayPal.

Yes. Here's to the crazy ones... because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.

In all seriousness, though, it's not my first rodeo. I have no illusions about the scale of building an OS or how long projects like Haiku, ReactOS or GNUStep took to get usable. This is just something I like doing in my Copious Spare Time™ and that I hope will be useful someday.

I've always liked Apple's design and elegance, but am not thrilled with the direction of recent macOS® or how closed the hardware has become. And I'm a big believer in open source. So ... let's build something that feels as elegant, without all the lock-in, and maybe (just maybe) I can get it to a point that reasonably useful Mac apps build & run on it. And if not, we'll build a lot of cool pieces along the way and learn a ton. I'm OK with that.