[__turbobrew__]

Why would any group want to take on a project which could be instantly killed by an external for profit entity? For now Asahi is left alone by Apple but that could change in a single day and the entire project is dead. It doesn’t seem like a productive way to direct the limited energy that distribution foundations have on hand.

[tomnipotent]

Except there's no legal basis Apple could use to "instantly kill" the project.

[__turbobrew__]

Apple could change the platform/firmware to break Asahi if they wanted to. They could lock down the hardware to make it nearly impossible to install another OS like they do with iphone.

[mort96]

I mean so could any other hardware vendor?

No Mac in history has been locked down in the way you describe, and there's really no indication that Apple would start now. If they were ever going to, the ARM transition would've been the perfect time to do it, yet they invested engineering resources into adding support for booting non-Apple kernels into their bootloader.

They could of course release a new line of laptops or a firmware update tomorrow which locks down the bootloader and prevents booting non-Apple kernels. But so could Lenovo, Dell, HP, Samsung, Sony, or any other laptop vendor. Or Microsoft, Intel, AMD or Qualcomm could exert their influence, as owners of various parts of the ecosystem, to shift the PC landscape in that direction.

[__turbobrew__]

Most hardware vendors don’t make operating systems, so they are not incentivized to limit what software can run on the hardware.

For example, intel and AMD contribute a lot of code and engineering hours to open source projects because they WANT people to be able to run that software on their hardware.

[mort96]

What you're saying is true for phones too, yet phone manufacturers lock down their hardware to only allow it to run Google's operating system. The argument that "hardware manufacturers live by selling hardware and don't care what software customers run as long as it's on their hardware" clearly doesn't work.

But if you truly do believe that's a good argument, consider Microsoft's position. They wouldn't want you to run non-Windows operating systems and hold considerable power over the Windows PC ecosystem.

[tomnipotent]

They could, but that wouldn't change that there's still no legal basis that jeopardizes anything that's already been contributed.

[__turbobrew__]

Sure, there is no legal issue with these contributions. The problem is why would a project like Debian spend a bunch of work stewarding the Asahi project when Apple can just make the project impossible to progress if they so desire? The Debian project already is strapped for resources to build their distribution and stewarding a possibly throw away project is probably not the best use of their time.

[tomnipotent]

Your entire argument is based on a random hypothetical. Why should Debian steward any work if a meteor could collide with our planet and wipe out all life?

[__turbobrew__]

Are you making the argument that an extinction level meteor event is within the same realm as Apple deciding to lock down their hardware? It is called risk management, here is how it goes: The likelyhood that an earth ending meteor comes and destroys the earth is very very low and therefore Debian decides that they should still write software. On the other hand the likelyhood that Apple -- a for profit company -- locks down their laptop hardware like they do for iOS is much higher. Apple has a history of walled gardens and conceivably there could be profit motives to lock down the hardware. Given the risk, potential supporters of Asahi have to decide whether or not it is worth the risk of putting a bunch of time and money into the project.