First, Apple does open source the core OS as Darwin. I appreciate your perspective, but I am curious why anyone would think that open sourcing the rest of it is even a remote possibility?
As far as closed source being safe, I don't think open source is safe either. We have seen some horrendous exploitable bugs which lived in open source code for years. Just because something can be thoroughly audited, doesn't mean it is.
I've personally been around a lot of years, and I'm just no longer convinced that a handful of sincere and enthusiastic volunteers can be better at security than a highly motivated, well paid, staff of competent engineers. These systems are just too complex nowadays. I get the concept of open source and having the ability to review the code, etc., but in practice stuff happens anyway in either case. Sorry for the rambling, but I guess I'm just not so convinced any more about the absolutist arguments concerning the relative merits. Maybe I'm just getting too cynical...
As far as closed source being safe, I don't think open source is safe either. We have seen some horrendous exploitable bugs which lived in open source code for years. Just because something can be thoroughly audited, doesn't mean it is.
I've personally been around a lot of years, and I'm just no longer convinced that a handful of sincere and enthusiastic volunteers can be better at security than a highly motivated, well paid, staff of competent engineers. These systems are just too complex nowadays. I get the concept of open source and having the ability to review the code, etc., but in practice stuff happens anyway in either case. Sorry for the rambling, but I guess I'm just not so convinced any more about the absolutist arguments concerning the relative merits. Maybe I'm just getting too cynical...