[capableweb]

> I don't think they want to take on the responsibility for maintaining all those packages

That's not how a package manager works. The people responsible for APT/AUR do not maintain all the packages within the repositories themselves. This even applies to the App Store. Apple does not maintain the apps there themselves, it's up to the people publishing the apps. So there really isn't any reasons except they can't make money on it, hence it doesn't exist as an officially sanctioned way of pulling down programs.

[offtop5]

Yes and no, Apple doesn't want the support issues going into their queue and clogging up their customer support system.

When Billy Bob installs the wrong package from Homebrew now he just complains on a forum like this, or on stack overflow. He doesn't email Apple

[OskarS]

Yeah, if Apple says "This is our official package manager, and you can use it to install OpenSSL/nginx/whatever", like or not, they are on the hook if it breaks, and they have to fix it. Like, companies are going to be like "we trusted you and now our website is broken, and we're going to sue you".

Homebrew gets away with this a little bit by basically being unofficial, implicitly saying "we're not guaranteeing anything here, this is purely for convenience". It would be much harder to make this argument if you were an official Apple project.