Apple will be among several U.S. tech giants to attend a meeting at the White House today to discuss cybersecurity and possible security threats posed by open-source software, Reuters reports.
The meeting will be held by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and will focus on "concerns...
considering Darwin (unix/BSD) is open source and what MacOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS and bridgeOS runs on (and by law, they can’t close that source code), I can’t see Apple arguing in favor of closed source software. Assuming they don’t have an entirely new inhouse OS in the pipelines that they’re planning to replace Darwin with.
They created their own CPUs. A new OS doesnt seem out of the realm of possibility.
not to nitpick, ‘core’ parts of that cpu were licensed. not saying they didn’t do a good job with it, they certainly did.
either way, agree they could develop their own OS. but i doubt they will at this stage.
Darwin is open source to avoid having to open source other components to macOS while still adhering to various licenses for software it depends on for. If Apple could legally close source that part of the OS they would in a heartbeat, they’ve already gone out of their way to make it nearly impossible to use by (iirc) obfuscating the compiler forcing users to reverse engineer the compiling process for newer versions of darwin.
they would if they could. which is my point. without a replacement OS in the pipes, apple would be shooting themselves by demonizing open source software in front of the government.