Well, Andy Hertzfeld has pushed for years for Apple to open up the source, when someone whose name escapes me asked for it to do a class on programming.
Andy contacted BIll Atkinson, who found a copy of the source. Andy then tried to get it donated to Computer History Museum, going through Apple legal.
That's the last I had heard, that Andy had been trying.
According to one report on this, Andy went through multiple Apple legal people before finally cornering Jobs at some event earlier this year. He brought it up to Jobs, and according to Andy, Jobs immediately called up the head of Apple Legal and said "do it". It just took awhile.
So this was done with full knowledge of Steve Jobs.
As for "public domain". There is a very definite difference between "available" and "public domain".
The source code for Linux is "available to anyone", it is not "public domain".
Public Domain has a very specific meaning. It means that *NOBODY* holds any legal rights to it. For example, very old books like Alice in Wonderland, slightly more recent works whose creators didn't register the copyright properly (under older copyright laws, you had to re-register after only a few years, or the work fell into the public domain,) such as the original 1960 "Little Shop of Horrors", and 1959's cult-classic "Plan 9 From Outer Space"; along with works created by the U.S. Government. (So photographs taken by U.S. government employees as part of their job are automatically in the public domain; such as astronauts in space.)
That means that *ANYONE* can do *ANYTHING* with the work they want. (Within the normal bounds of legality of course.) Anyone can take Little Shop of Horrors, re-edit it, and sell it. Any company can take photos of the Earth taken by astronauts and use it in their advertising. No permission needed. That's what "Public Domain" means.
On the other hand, you have things that are released to the public, but not placed into the public domain. These are licensed. The creator still maintains copyright on it, they just choose to allow much more use than is considered "normal". The source code for Linux, for example, is actually fairly restrictive. You CAN'T do just anything with it. You must share any changes you make. Many photos you find on Flickr are tagged "CC-BY-NC", which means that the copyright holder says you can use it, but you have to make sure to give them proper attribution, and you can't use it for commercial purposes. (i.e. you can't sell something with that photo, you can't use it in your advertising, etc.) What apple has done is more like this last one. They say "here it is! Play with it, learn from it, just don't try to re-sell it."
So someone could try to recompile it for OS X and give it away for free. But they can't try to sell it.
Andy contacted BIll Atkinson, who found a copy of the source. Andy then tried to get it donated to Computer History Museum, going through Apple legal.
That's the last I had heard, that Andy had been trying.
According to one report on this, Andy went through multiple Apple legal people before finally cornering Jobs at some event earlier this year. He brought it up to Jobs, and according to Andy, Jobs immediately called up the head of Apple Legal and said "do it". It just took awhile.
So this was done with full knowledge of Steve Jobs.
As for "public domain". There is a very definite difference between "available" and "public domain".
The source code for Linux is "available to anyone", it is not "public domain".
Public Domain has a very specific meaning. It means that *NOBODY* holds any legal rights to it. For example, very old books like Alice in Wonderland, slightly more recent works whose creators didn't register the copyright properly (under older copyright laws, you had to re-register after only a few years, or the work fell into the public domain,) such as the original 1960 "Little Shop of Horrors", and 1959's cult-classic "Plan 9 From Outer Space"; along with works created by the U.S. Government. (So photographs taken by U.S. government employees as part of their job are automatically in the public domain; such as astronauts in space.)
That means that *ANYONE* can do *ANYTHING* with the work they want. (Within the normal bounds of legality of course.) Anyone can take Little Shop of Horrors, re-edit it, and sell it. Any company can take photos of the Earth taken by astronauts and use it in their advertising. No permission needed. That's what "Public Domain" means.
On the other hand, you have things that are released to the public, but not placed into the public domain. These are licensed. The creator still maintains copyright on it, they just choose to allow much more use than is considered "normal". The source code for Linux, for example, is actually fairly restrictive. You CAN'T do just anything with it. You must share any changes you make. Many photos you find on Flickr are tagged "CC-BY-NC", which means that the copyright holder says you can use it, but you have to make sure to give them proper attribution, and you can't use it for commercial purposes. (i.e. you can't sell something with that photo, you can't use it in your advertising, etc.) What apple has done is more like this last one. They say "here it is! Play with it, learn from it, just don't try to re-sell it."
So someone could try to recompile it for OS X and give it away for free. But they can't try to sell it.