I always felt a little queasy installing a .kext from some random foreign-language websites (be it FTDI, or Alfa drivers, or even RealTek updates). I can feel the bias in me, "Oh no, this must be bad because it's foreign," which is absurd, but I still shouldn't be asked to sudo something when I buy offbrand hardware.

You're right, Scottish English does seem like a foreign language sometimes...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTDI

Huh. My bias runs so deep that I somehow misremembered a Chinese-language document from FTDI, which I guess I made up in my mind. Unless like some companies their drivers are done in their Taiwan office. It quite common for multinational companies to distribute projects to different sites.

Assuming the poster is American, then yup .. still foreign.

If they keep all third parties out of their kernel, could this ease a possible x86-to-ARM transition?

Potentially, though there are other solutions that could be used. There was a product they used a while back during the transition to x86 architecture that did code translation, for example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTransit

That would work with user-space extensions, but would it work in the kernel?

That was and still is an impressive piece of code. Another more recent one is the RPCS3 PS3 Emulator, emulating the async PPC cell chip on modern x86 processors.

(Better known as Rosetta, when Apple licensed it.)

Yes, absolutely.

And Apple takes another step closer toward a proprietary OS away from UNIX. Perhaps 10.16 will lose certification [1].

[1] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

EDIT: I can't find anything that references kernel extensions in the conformance [2] section of the spec, so maybe 10.16 will adhere to the UNIX03 standard after all.

[2] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/

POSIX does not standardise kernel extensions. You can't use Linux kernel extensions on other OSes for example.

You can't even use Linux kernel extensions across different versions of Linux…

QNX is also a certified UNIX for embedded deployment, yet it is a micro-kernel OS.

https://blackberry.qnx.com/en/resource-center/qnx-certificat...

UNIX certification doesn't say anything about how a kernel should be implemented, or what kind of driver architecture is used.

Anyone can buy UNIX certification. It just means you set fire to an appropriately sized bundle of cash. In return you get a nice sticker from the trademark holder. It is not especially meaningful.