“Nineteen ninety-nine will be remembered in history for many
things, but one of them will not be Apple’s energetic embrace of
open source. Despite the initial hoopla surrounding Apple’s
announcement that it would open-source the underpinnings of Mac OS
X, there’s very little there there as I write this, two days after
The World As We Know It Did Not End.”
“Apple’s approach to open source during 1999 — at least the
part of it in public view — will be remembered like the uneasy,
arm’s-length embraces between Soviet and satellite premiers during
the Cold War. (It’s not quite clear which side — Apple or the
open-source community — has the nukes.)…”
“Apple boldly announced Darwin in mid-March and has released
several tepidly received updates since then. The main problem is
that all the source opened thus far can best be labeled “mostly
useless.” The so-called “final version” of OS X will not be based
on the Darwin source code available today. That means nothing Apple
has released until now under the guise of the Darwin OS is much
more than smoke screen.”