[skissane]

> Whenever I see the Darwin kernel brought into the discussion I can't help but wonder how different things could have been if Apple had just forked Linux

XNU is only partially open sourced – the core is open sourced, but significant chunks are missing, e.g. APFS filesystem.

Forking Linux might have legally compelled them to make all kernel modules open source–which while that would likely be a positive for humanity, isn't what Apple wants to do

[mattl]

At one point NeXT considered distributing GCC under the GPL with some proprietary parts linked at first boot into the binary.

Stallman after speaking with lawyers rejected this.

https://sourceforge.net/p/clisp/clisp/ci/default/tree/doc/Wh...

Look for "NeXT" on this page.

[leoh]

Stallman’s insistence that a judge would side with him is pretty arrogant in my opinion; eg looking at Oracle v. Google decades later and how folks deciding the case seemed to be confused about technical matters.

[skissane]

I don't think it was "arrogant" – if you read the link, he explains that he originally thought differently, but he changed his mind based on what his lawyer told him. I don't think you can label a non-lawyer "arrogant" for accepting the legal advice of their own attorney – whether that advice is correct or not can be debated, but it isn't arrogant for someone to trust the correctness of their own lawyer's advice.