To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that reimplementation would be a legal issue.

I meant to imply that unlike the case with Windows/Wine, there is no reimplementation of the overwhelming majority of macOS APIs. So if you wanted to do this now, you could only do it by copying frameworks directly from macOS (which some people are doing for various reasons), and that does have some potential legal issues.

Theoretically, a reimplementation is possible. It doesn't exist, it's a huge project (far, far bigger than GNUstep), and as someone notes down-thread, it's also a moving target. There are also uncounted numbers of bugs in the current implementation of Apple's APIs, and for many things to work correctly you'd need to implement the bugs too since developers have designed around them.

Yes, Wine exists. But Wine started in 1993. The idea that a bit of hard work by some good developers is going to provide a reimplementation of the macOS frameworks in a year or three strikes me as without any foundation in reality.

Yeah oddly enough that seems like the diciest part of the project to me. The Cocoa API is vast, reimplementing it isn't necessarily rocket science but would require a pretty huge amount of labor.

And you're right - the Cocoa API continues to evolve, so if the goal is "source compatible with latest and greatest macOS APIs" it's hard to see how a small group of open source devs can out-run the sum totality of every API engineer at Apple.

I have similar feelings about cross-platform tools like Flutter as well - the idea in a vacuum is reasonably sound, but then you run into the basic scale problems of maintaining compatibility with a moving target - a moving target that has >10x more staffing than you do.

Working second link: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_...> (it has a "." at the end)

That decision only applies in the USA. I think it will be undetermined in many jurisdictions.

If it is, then expect everyone selling PCs to get a nicely worded letter from IBM about their BIOS. Any jurisdiction that rules differently will imperil their whole software industry.

(Edited for clarity)

IBM hasn't been doing that for decades, despite the supreme court decision being quite recent - I think that was more about clean room reimplementation than APIs.

My point wasn't about ruling differently but the lack of rulings/laws making it explicitly legal creating uncertainty and opportunities for Oracle/Apple to go after people. Some countries have other ways to deal with it too, e.g. NZ allows reverse engineering for compatibility purposes, which seems likely to cover APIs (not sure, haven't needed to know).

IBM already tried that in the 80's and lost, due to the way Compaq did it, that is why you have PC compatibles.

Yes, but Oracle's lawsuit was trying to rewrite the book so copying API was copyright infringement regardless of the clean room used.

Nope, and it was a pity that they lost.

Ok, why was it a pity Oracle lost?

Android Java is Google's own flavour of J++ and needs to be slammed by the same exemplary way.