Steve (Jobs) famously, and impulsively claimed they were going to release FT as open source - so impulsive that he never even checked with their lawyers first, because it never happened due to legal/licensing issues, not because they didn't want to.

Do you think that's true, sounds exactly like a publicity stunt to ensure a big launch in the face of having no answer to "is it interoperable".

If you say "yeah sure it is, we're even releasing it as open source" then you prevent the product falling at the first hurdle because people want an interoperable solution. Once you have adoption network effect carries you through.

Sounds like most probably a standard corporate lie by Jobs; do you have evidence to the contrary?

Very little original software from apple is open source.

Things that they’ve adopted/forked/bought are but there’s not much they’ve started from scratch and released as OSS.

There is almost no expectation of it from people who know Apple.

Promising something unexpected and not delivering is undoubtedly more damaging than saying nothing.