[WorldMaker]

> This isn't a problem Apple's software stack saw so often

Apple had the exact same component object model problems which is why it took the long way around discovering exactly the right way to deal with it and eventually gave up and bought NeXTStep. Objective-C exists in large parts to solve the same problems that COM does! It also has a reference counting component memory model and a component message model designed to handle compiler name-mangling issues.

> closed-source binary blobs that could expose objects

Component systems aren't just for closed source, though. They are also for deployment management and trying to solve problems where multiple apps from different teams need to interact and trying to avoid strong coupling to allow better flexibility/resiliency.

Even in Open Source there have been plenty of COM-like projects. Gnome 2 built a lot of early things on Bonobo which was pretty directly a COM clone. Since then things have migrated to D-Bus, and while D-Bus is not a COM clone in the way that Bonobo was, it is still there to solve a lot of the same coupling problems so that individual apps can communicate without directly depending on one another. D-Bus just takes more of a publish/subscribe approach than an object model for components that more directly communicate.