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Two open-source developers have separately reported that code which was previously available is now behind lock and key.

'With the release of Mac OS X for x86 processors, Apple has chosen to not release source to key components of the OS, such as the kernel and all drivers, writes Rob Braun in Dæmon News. 'This means Darwin/x86 is dead in the water; Darwin/ppc has many closed source components and is a deprecated architecture.'

In a post on Apple's own mailing lists, Peter O'Gorman

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explains why.

'I assume that the idea is to limit the source code availability to those who are attempting to steal Mac OS X and use it on systems not built or approved by Apple,' he writes. 'I can understand and applaud the goal, but not the methods.'

Apple made the Darwin 1.0 available as an open-source project in June 2000, ahead of the January 2001 release of the first, 10.0 version of OS X. It has since extended its open-source commitment to include 11 projects, among them the Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous) intelligent networking technology and the WebKit rendering engine used by Safari and many other applications.

As soon as it announced last summer that it would be migrating to an Intel hardware platform, it became clear that there would be an ongoing tussle between hackers attempting to adapt the Intel-friendly version of OS X to run on standard PCs and Apple's development team, charged with preventing that from happening. Inevitably Apple's ever-watchful legal team would also have a hand in proceedings.