Apple is working to improve relationships with the free software community, but developers won't settle for lip service. (Linux-Watch)

When Apple announced that it was moving Mac OS X to the Intel platform, one thing that didn't get much attention was that Apple would not be open-sourcing the Intel Darwin kernel.

Now, Apple has reversed its course and has quietly announced that it will open-source the kernel after all.

In a note to the Darwin developer's list, Apple's open-source project manager, Ernest Prabhakar, wrote, "As of today [Aug. 7], we are posting buildable kernel sources for Intel-based Macs alongside the usual PowerPC (and other Intel) sources, starting with Mac OS X 10.4.7."

In addition, Apple is launching a new open-source Darwin developers' site, Mac OS Forge.

This site currently hosts five open-source projects: the Darwin kernel; Bonjour, a no-configuration-needed network technology; the Darwin Calendar Server; Launchd, a system service management framework; and WebKit, a KDE-based Web browser engine.

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These new moves come, however, only after many open-source developers have grown disgusted with Apple's open-source attitude.

In June, for example, Apple officials told Tom Yeager, a columnist who follows Darwin, that only a "fraction of a fraction" of Mac users were interested in working with or recompiling Darwin source code.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.

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