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> concealing that he is a former Apple engineer with direct contacts to the people involved in Apple Silicon development This is false. I am a former Apple eng

> concealing that he is a former Apple engineer with direct contacts to the people involved in Apple Silicon development This is false. I am a former Apple engineer. I did not conceal it (it's the top item of my resume and my LinkedIn and I made my PR from my public Github with my name attached, as opposed to a pseudonym which is expressly allowed by Asahi policy). I also had no exposure, at all, to any internal information or code about macOS, SPTM, or Apple Silicon during my time there. I also don't have connections to people involved in Apple Silicon development (and I'd add that this does not mean someone cannot contribute, the question is were they exposed to tainted information, which is absolutely not true in my case). I have many friends who work for Apple (I'm a Stanford alum) but none in Apple Silicon directly. I disagree with the phrasing of this entire thing, but this statement is demonstrably false.

thrwy19940314 11d ago
At least according to your own accounts on the Asahi IRC rooms, you were very aware of SPTM (which is part of the AS platform) and knew the people working on it: https://oftc.catirclogs.org/asahi-dev/2026-06-04#35383763 https://oftc.catirclogs.org/asahi-dev/2026-06-04#35383763
- deleted 11d ago
  [deleted]
- quitspamming 11d ago
  You are accusing someone by twisting their own words about their own self disclosed identity against them from a throwaway account created 5 hours ago. And they say irony is dead. I say this from an anonymous account but at least it isn't a throwaway. And at least I have the good taste to feel a little shame for my hypocrisy.
- politician 11d ago
  Do you work for Apple?
  - bigyabai 11d ago
    Probably not. Clean room RE is serious business, projects like Dolphin have to carefully vet contributors to remain legal.
    - 15155 10d ago
      Everyone says this, and then exactly zero cases are cited in support of or against this creative legal theory known as "clean room RE." No statute defines "clean room RE" and there's basically no relevant litigation establishing case law.
      - bigyabai 10d ago
        Who volunteers to be the shmuck that fights Nintendo's lawyers in court? Who's funding the defense against Apple? It's safest to err on the side of plausible deniability, any proximity to OEM software increases liability if things go wrong.
        charcircuit 10d ago
        Nintendo doesn't care. There's been proprietary Nintendo SDK code in libogc (open source library for making GameCube homebrew) for years. And more recently the various decompilation process have made recreations of linked code from the SDK that compile match byte for byte. In practice the legal risk of being sued into oblivion for this is not there. If anything there would be a DMCA takedown / cease and desist.
        literallywho 10d ago
        Right, but they are one of the biggest DMCA abusers. They killed many fan projects. They killed game renting in Japan as a concept. They killed Yuzu (a Switch emulator). And they could change their mind at any time.
        charcircuit 10d ago
- ADevWithAnIdea 11d ago
  The friend I am referring to I met at Stanford around April of 2026 in a dorm event. We've spoken in person exactly once (I use "friend" loosely to describe anyone I've spoken to who I'm not on bad terms with) and at no point did we discuss anything detailed about Apple Silicon. For further context, I left Apple in June of 2025.
  - flippingheck 11d ago
    Isn't that chat log from 2024?
    - vesrah 11d ago
      If you read the page it says 2026-06-04.
      - flippingheck 11d ago
        Ah. I read the post, but only saw "2024-07-16 04:52 ChanServ changed [...]" On mobile I didn't see the full URL, and zoomed before I saw the calendar. My bad.
    - mathisfun123 11d ago
      am i crazy or is the date stamp not literally in the link?
- viraptor 11d ago
  Spend enough time in tech and you'll know lots of people who know both technical and business secrets and are under various levels of NDAs. The message you link to explicitly mentions only public info was exchanged. Just talking to someone is not an indication of infringement in any way.
  - Eufrat 11d ago
    I think this comment is missing the forest for the trees. Obviously, ephemeral interaction is going to happen. The author’s blogpost is sloppy and has some signs of being AI written. This kind of bleeds into the main point I’m going to make. Asahi Linux folks are clearly more conservative and erring on the side of caution, so, this means that the glibness with which the author is treating any of this is probably sufficient cause to refuse his entries. It is unclear if LLMs should be considered a toxic waste dump in terms of trying to maintain a clean room. We have not established a standard. It is clear the author doesn’t think this is a big deal, so that’s one conflict. The other conflict is that it is not clear what their exact interactions with Apple Silicon folks is and their glibness of it doesn’t clarify anything. If you take a group that is trying to be very careful about the potential legal landmines a still nascent technology has and you get someone that espouses a general glibness about those concerns wanting to merge code…why on earth would you expect that group to accept them as a contributor? This is not to say this isn’t really cool and a neat use of LLMs, but it is totally understandable why Asahi Linux won’t accept the fruits of this kind of development. If it turns out that Apple can identify its non-OSS code in this, it’ll be a mess.
    - noir_lord 10d ago
      > Asahi Linux folks are clearly more conservative and erring on the side of caution I mean they are working around and on hardware controlled by a nearly 5 trillion market cap behemoth who has resources on the level of some nation states. I'd be erring on the side of caution as well if they could hire that many lawyers.
- flippingheck 11d ago
  > <StanfordAppliedCyber[m]> one of my friends is a very senior engineer who lead a lot of the sptm work and controls a lot of boot, may talk to him about it (obviously he hasn't told me anything that isn't public) For the lazy.
donw 11d ago
I'm sure Omarchy will appreciate the effort, even if you're snubbed by Asahi -- being able to run Linux flawlessly on Apple Silicon is going to be awesome.
- bigyabai 11d ago
  I wouldn't expect "flawless" support for those chips in the next decade, even with AI. The earliest-supported Asahi chips still have missing power management and dark silicon. The only way to get flawless Linux support is to buy hardware from an OEM that supports Linux well.
- nsagent 10d ago
  I'm sure they would: https://tbreak.com/omarchy-m-apple-silicon-linux/ https://tbreak.com/omarchy-m-apple-silicon-linux/
politician 11d ago
Would you consider taking all of your learnings and translate them into a concrete specification and publish it on your website, so that we can all do our own clean-room from-spec-only implementation?
literoldolphin 11d ago
Ah, don't worry about those guys. This is very cool! I love the technical write up -- so interesting: )
SXX 11d ago
FFS Linux kernel have tons of patches with "Asahi Lina" specified as "author" even though commiters are real people: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?qt=author&q=asahi https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... Just call yourself "Idea Llmina" or whatever and let someone else commit it.
- deleted 10d ago
  [deleted]
smallnamespace 11d ago
Everything that you say can be true, and yet Asahi project may want to avoid needing to prove what you say in a courtroom.
- applfanboysbgon 11d ago
  "We don't want to take on the risk of working with a former Apple employee, who could potentially leak trade secrets and expose us to unwanted liability" is a very different statement than asserting that they were banned for deception. The post you're replying to is responding to accusations against their character and behaviour. Clearing those up is an entirely different matter than saying anything about whether former employees should be allowed to contribute to the project.

thrwy19940314 11d ago

At least according to your own accounts on the Asahi IRC rooms, you were very aware of SPTM (which is part of the AS platform) and knew the people working on it: https://oftc.catirclogs.org/asahi-dev/2026-06-04#35383763 https://oftc.catirclogs.org/asahi-dev/2026-06-04#35383763

deleted 11d ago
[deleted]
quitspamming 11d ago
You are accusing someone by twisting their own words about their own self disclosed identity against them from a throwaway account created 5 hours ago. And they say irony is dead. I say this from an anonymous account but at least it isn't a throwaway. And at least I have the good taste to feel a little shame for my hypocrisy.
politician 11d ago
Do you work for Apple?
- bigyabai 11d ago
  Probably not. Clean room RE is serious business, projects like Dolphin have to carefully vet contributors to remain legal.
  - 15155 10d ago
    Everyone says this, and then exactly zero cases are cited in support of or against this creative legal theory known as "clean room RE." No statute defines "clean room RE" and there's basically no relevant litigation establishing case law.
    - bigyabai 10d ago
      Who volunteers to be the shmuck that fights Nintendo's lawyers in court? Who's funding the defense against Apple? It's safest to err on the side of plausible deniability, any proximity to OEM software increases liability if things go wrong.
      - charcircuit 10d ago
        Nintendo doesn't care. There's been proprietary Nintendo SDK code in libogc (open source library for making GameCube homebrew) for years. And more recently the various decompilation process have made recreations of linked code from the SDK that compile match byte for byte. In practice the legal risk of being sued into oblivion for this is not there. If anything there would be a DMCA takedown / cease and desist.
        literallywho 10d ago
        Right, but they are one of the biggest DMCA abusers. They killed many fan projects. They killed game renting in Japan as a concept. They killed Yuzu (a Switch emulator). And they could change their mind at any time.
        charcircuit 10d ago
ADevWithAnIdea 11d ago
The friend I am referring to I met at Stanford around April of 2026 in a dorm event. We've spoken in person exactly once (I use "friend" loosely to describe anyone I've spoken to who I'm not on bad terms with) and at no point did we discuss anything detailed about Apple Silicon. For further context, I left Apple in June of 2025.
- flippingheck 11d ago
  Isn't that chat log from 2024?
  - vesrah 11d ago
    If you read the page it says 2026-06-04.
    - flippingheck 11d ago
      Ah. I read the post, but only saw "2024-07-16 04:52 ChanServ changed [...]" On mobile I didn't see the full URL, and zoomed before I saw the calendar. My bad.
  - mathisfun123 11d ago
    am i crazy or is the date stamp not literally in the link?
viraptor 11d ago
Spend enough time in tech and you'll know lots of people who know both technical and business secrets and are under various levels of NDAs. The message you link to explicitly mentions only public info was exchanged. Just talking to someone is not an indication of infringement in any way.
- Eufrat 11d ago
  I think this comment is missing the forest for the trees. Obviously, ephemeral interaction is going to happen. The author’s blogpost is sloppy and has some signs of being AI written. This kind of bleeds into the main point I’m going to make. Asahi Linux folks are clearly more conservative and erring on the side of caution, so, this means that the glibness with which the author is treating any of this is probably sufficient cause to refuse his entries. It is unclear if LLMs should be considered a toxic waste dump in terms of trying to maintain a clean room. We have not established a standard. It is clear the author doesn’t think this is a big deal, so that’s one conflict. The other conflict is that it is not clear what their exact interactions with Apple Silicon folks is and their glibness of it doesn’t clarify anything. If you take a group that is trying to be very careful about the potential legal landmines a still nascent technology has and you get someone that espouses a general glibness about those concerns wanting to merge code…why on earth would you expect that group to accept them as a contributor? This is not to say this isn’t really cool and a neat use of LLMs, but it is totally understandable why Asahi Linux won’t accept the fruits of this kind of development. If it turns out that Apple can identify its non-OSS code in this, it’ll be a mess.
  - noir_lord 10d ago
    > Asahi Linux folks are clearly more conservative and erring on the side of caution I mean they are working around and on hardware controlled by a nearly 5 trillion market cap behemoth who has resources on the level of some nation states. I'd be erring on the side of caution as well if they could hire that many lawyers.
flippingheck 11d ago
> <StanfordAppliedCyber[m]> one of my friends is a very senior engineer who lead a lot of the sptm work and controls a lot of boot, may talk to him about it (obviously he hasn't told me anything that isn't public) For the lazy.

donw 11d ago

I'm sure Omarchy will appreciate the effort, even if you're snubbed by Asahi -- being able to run Linux flawlessly on Apple Silicon is going to be awesome.

bigyabai 11d ago
I wouldn't expect "flawless" support for those chips in the next decade, even with AI. The earliest-supported Asahi chips still have missing power management and dark silicon. The only way to get flawless Linux support is to buy hardware from an OEM that supports Linux well.
nsagent 10d ago
I'm sure they would: https://tbreak.com/omarchy-m-apple-silicon-linux/ https://tbreak.com/omarchy-m-apple-silicon-linux/

politician 11d ago

Would you consider taking all of your learnings and translate them into a concrete specification and publish it on your website, so that we can all do our own clean-room from-spec-only implementation?

literoldolphin 11d ago

Ah, don't worry about those guys. This is very cool! I love the technical write up -- so interesting: )

SXX 11d ago

FFS Linux kernel have tons of patches with "Asahi Lina" specified as "author" even though commiters are real people: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?qt=author&q=asahi https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... Just call yourself "Idea Llmina" or whatever and let someone else commit it.

deleted 10d ago
[deleted]

smallnamespace 11d ago

Everything that you say can be true, and yet Asahi project may want to avoid needing to prove what you say in a courtroom.

applfanboysbgon 11d ago
"We don't want to take on the risk of working with a former Apple employee, who could potentially leak trade secrets and expose us to unwanted liability" is a very different statement than asserting that they were banned for deception. The post you're replying to is responding to accusations against their character and behaviour. Clearing those up is an entirely different matter than saying anything about whether former employees should be allowed to contribute to the project.