Ellen Hancock was hired to get the project back on track, but quickly concluded it would never ship. In August 1996, it was announced that Copland was canceled and Apple would look outside the company for a new operating system. Among many choices, they selected OpenStep and purchased NeXT in 1997 to obtain it. In the interim period, while OpenStep was ported to the Mac, Apple released a much more legacy-oriented Mac OS 8 in 1997, followed by Mac OS 9 in 1999. Mac OS X became Apple's next-generation operating system with its release in 2001. All of these releases bear functional or cosmetic influence from Copland.