Why assume it's a greenfield project? I would think most open source software that comes out of companies have lived internally for a while before going public?
This. I’m willing to bet I talked to one of the people who use this internally at Apple a few years back when I interviewed there (before they decided to do away with remote hires). They didn’t mention it, but it fits the context.
I absolutely loved it and I’ve been extremely impatient to see its release. I used it to generate k8s manifests, Terraform, all infra config files. Very flexible and fun to use
Additionally I cant think of other such projects from Apple. They tend to build things that get used extensively till the end of their life is consumed.
I wish Apple would continue to open source much more. Especially old software much like Microsoft does. I would kind of enjoy a Linux Distro that can natively run old Apple software and tools.
Clang leaps to mind. Most of LLVM was developed under Apple's auspices, although the project predates Apple hiring Chris Latner. Swift is also open source, although in practice it's almost always used in a macOS context. Which I think is a shame, it's a great language for writing the sorts of servers for which people usually reach for Go.
That's not a complete list of programs Apple has open-sourced, although clearly open-source software isn't what they're best known for. But clang alone is a worthy contribution which deserves to be recognized.
