Apple also has open source
Shortly after the release of macOS 14.2 with codename “MacOS Sonoma”, Apple also announced the release of the source code updated from this, which uses open source, including Darwin components and other non-GUI components, programs and libraries.
The term "Darwin" in the context of Apple refers to the macOS Kernel. Darwin is a Unix-based operating system which serves as the underlying foundation for macOS. It was first released as an open source operating system in 2000 and is made up of several key technologies, including the XNU kernel which is a hybrid kernel combining elements of Mach and FreeBSD.
In July 2003, Apple released Darwin under version 2.0 of the Apple Public Source License (APSL), which It means that Apple has released part of the source code, However, the macOS graphical user interface (GUI), known as Aqua, is not open source, meaning that the full macOS experience is not available on an open source basis.
The fact that Darwin is open source has allowed the development community to contribute and use parts of Darwin in other projects. Additionally, it has made it easier to understand how the foundation of macOS works and has allowed developers to explore and better understand the underlying architecture of Apple's operating system.
Apple has actively contributed to open source projects beyond its own products, for example participating in the improvement of fundamental technologies such as LLVM and Clang, which are essential for software development.
It is worth mentioning that Apple leads several significant projects, such as the rendering engine WebKit and the Swift programming language. However, it should be noted that certain self-developed components are kept secret for various reasons.
All these source codes are available on the website Open Source at Apple, as well as in GitHub repositories, which gives interested developers and users the opportunity to explore, contribute and collaborate on the development of the system.
About the recently released source code of macOS 14.2 (Sonoma) components, It is worth mentioning that the release includes the source code of 172 packages, encompassing Darwin components and other non-graphical user interface (GUI) elements, programs, and libraries. It is important to mention that the gnudiff and libstdcxx packages have been removed from the macOS 13 branch.
Among the available components the XNU kernel source code is found, presented in the form of code snippets associated with the next version of macOS, in addition to The open source components used in iOS 17.2 have also been published, It is mentioned that the release includes two packages: WebKit and libiconv.
Finally, just to mention some of the news that presents MacOS Sonoma se highlights improvements to improved autofill in PDF fields and other forms, which will display a selection of AutoComplete options, such as your name, address, phone number or details from your contact list.
In the part of the Messages, now has an arrow in the upper right corner of some conversations. Clicking this arrow will take you to the first unread message in the conversation; It's great for those group chats you usually ignore. Also the verification of contact keys stands out which provides automatic alerts and contact verification codes to help verify contacts.
In addition to this, a new weather widget is included and Apple has greatly improved the Clock application with preset timers and a "Recent" view and a large number of bug fixes are also included, of which the curl fix and its associated library, libcurl, which had two vulnerabilities with a CVSS score of “9.8 CRITICAL” out of a maximum of 10.
Finally If you are interested in learning a little more about the components released by Apple, you can visit the following link.