Apple has delighted fans of the open-source world by taking steps to publish every single version of macOS and iOS kernel in an open-source capacity. This means that each individual version of the company’s firmware kernel is now available online for anyone to download, inspect, and interrogate to find out more about how macOS and iOS are put together at the lowest kernel level.
Currently, developer will be able to download these kernel on GitHub. And you can also find ARM versions of the kernel for the first time. Apple’s platforms are actually based on extremely popular open-source creations, such as the UNIX core. It’s for that reason that they are then pushed back and made available under Apple’s Open Source License.
Via Redmond Pie And TechCrunch, Image Via Redmond Pie And It's FOSS
With that being said, and even with Apple’s public love of open-source, the development and research community has always had a problem with how long it actually takes Apple to publish something back to the community under the aforementioned Apple Open Source license.
Apple has published macOS kernel source code up until version of 10.13, while for iOS kernel source up until version of 10.3.3 should go some way to alleviating those complaints, and should definitely give developers and interested individuals something to sink their investigative teeth into.
Why open-source? Reason perhaps Apple wants to share the kernel of the iPhone to get feedback from the open-source community. Maybe it means that Apple is working on a version of macOS that runs on ARM chips (as we reported before that Apple reportedly working on ARM chips on Mac). or maybe the company just wanted to see the reaction on Twitter.
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