> 1. Old bugs are not fixed.
If Apple would open source some of its OS apps, this would probably be a non-issue, I could see people putting in bugfix PRs the second Apple chooses to open source their core apps.
I don't see them doing this any time soon sadly, but it would make macOS much more stable, and probably secure.
The more I have thought about my views on Open Source vs Commercial software, I strongly feel that infrastructure code (an OS) should be more open source, I dont see Microsoft or Apple open sourcing any time soon, but it would make a world of a difference, imagine a world where Windows XP had been open sourced, and the community took it fully over and maintained its security, you'd have a drastically better version of Windows without all the fluff, or heck even Windows 7, which some argue was the last good version of Windows as well.
I wish ReactOS was drastically more usable.
Of the two, there's a lot clearer line to Apple open sourcing some of its core desktop apps, given market share (~16%?) and lack of internal resource prioritization (iOSiOSiOS).
The best time to do so would have been ~2010, after iTunes revenue provided a clear monetizable carve-out.
The second best time would be today.
The number of people saying 'I love the hardware you sell me, but am switching platforms because your software is trash' should be a flare that even Tim Cook can notice.
And anything that moves MacOS closer to OSS should be welcomed by Apple -- it's their easiest (and most affordable) path to competing with Microsoft (Azure) on desktop.
Or if they would just embrace Asahi! Have a team work full-time on parity, have asahi-linux feature complete on Mac launch day; mainlined soon thereafter.
We can dream.
I mean, there's more of a rationale there. If they cede complete control of the OS, then that starts to eat into their services business.
And it's hard to pick a middle ground once they open up the OS.
At least with apps, there's a clear dividing line between this app and that app.
Mail.app alone had enough issues and missing features to sustain an entire cottage industry, and would be one app I would certainly like to contribute to. But it shall never come to pass.
The tragedy here is that Apple mail was far and beyond the BEST IMAP client up until ~2014.
I worked for a defense contractor that used an encryption mechanism for email that was primarily supported by Outlook, Thunderbird had a paid plugin, but Apple just opened all my emails just fine.
Maybe it's just nostalgia but i really miss Eudora.
Mail.app makes me sad, because it is neglected. Outside of Thunderbird, it's sort of this last bastion of desktop-first mail clients when everything else, even "New" Outlook, has become a web app or some electron monster.
I use mail.app daily across phone, iPad and Mac - it's "fine" but I'd really love it to get some investment.
> I strongly feel that infrastructure code (an OS) should be more open source, I dont see Microsoft or Apple open sourcing any time soon
If only there were another platform vendor with different thoughts about open source infrastructure code. Alas.