But my point is that I already have a Mac, which is supposedly based on BSD, so why would I have to switch to Linux? It would be a waste of money. Why isn't this open source stuff ready to run right out out of the box, or right after downloading, on the Mac?
=========
A fair question.
Part of the answer can be found, I think, in the nature of the open source world. Right now, in the minds of most people, open source and Linux are one and the same so the lion's share of effort goes towards development on that platform.
Also, there's the inevitable tendency of developers to attack the sexiest problems first - or at least, those problems/projects which seem to be the sexiest. Bringing the Linux platform - OS and apps - to a point of maturity and attractiveness where it poses a credible threat to Microsoft (particularly outside of the US) appears to a more urgent undertaking than developing for OS X. Also, many of my open source comrades are unhappy with what they see as the proprietary nature of Apple on the machine end. That is, they wonder why they should develop for a platform that requires you to purchase a vendor specific type of hardware to run?
Without fail, this devolves into a religious debate (between Mac/BSD devotees and Linux partisans) which I prefer to stay out of.
Even so, there are a number of open source projects tuned to the OS X frequency. I'm not certain how easy most of these apps are to install, configure and use (the heart of your concern I think) but there is a respectable list.
For example, Apple compiles some projects here:
<http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/ >
And if you visit SourceForge at -
<http://sourceforge.net/index.php >
and search for os x you'll find a good number of projects.
I can't vouchsafe for the quality and usefulness of the products on offer but they are ready to run (some, undoubtedly, after much wrestling) on OS X.
.d.