Daring Fireball on why Apple won't open source apps

Thank God Gruber quit his day job to write Daring Fireball. Even when I disagree with him (which I admit is almost never), I always enjoy and respect what he has to say, and today is no different: In response to an article by Tim Bray questioning why Apple won't open-source its most popular apps (Mail, Safari, iChat, etc.), Gruber points out a fact that we often forget: Apple's in it for the money, and they use the popular apps included in OS X as an incentive to upgrade when the Mac-maker uncages a new cat. After all, most of the system's user-noticeable upgrades lie in improvements to the applications, not the OS itself, and if developers could manhandle the code and release a better version themselves more frequently, what's the point in buying a $130 piece of software?

Gruber explains it much better than I can in his article, so give it a read.