Thanks Jesus it's Intel and not Apple, Intel has been extremely good at working upstream and has immense contributions in the Linux kernel, mesa, and elsewhere. Wasting such talent on Apple would make the world worse for us all.
There are a myriad of companies that have thrived in "IP locked" environments, a host that have failed too. Equally there are heaps that have thrived and failed in "IP open" environments.
I think at best you could say it's more challenging or perhaps risky being a bit restricted with IP, but I'd call it miles away from a "graveyard".
You can hardly call Intel/amd/qualcomm etc all struggling due to the architectures being locked down.
Look at powerpc/Isa. It's (entirely?) open and hasn't really done any better than x86.
Fundamentally you're going to be tied to backwards compatibility to some extent. You're limited to evolution, not revolution. And I don't think x86 had failed to evolve? (eg avx10 is very new)
Apple doesn't have any contributions to the Linux kernel or other parts of the Linux graphics stack. They are unlikely to hire someone who wants to work on open source.
To be fair they don't have anything to do with Linux so there is nothing to contribute back towards. They use BSD licensed software for a reason.
Apple does have open source projects. https://opensource.apple.com But the scope is rather limited. For someone of Alyssa's skillset there really isn't anything there.
