I just wanted to correct what a previous poster said the Apple iPad processor. Even the mighty Apple cannot wriggle out of their license agreement with ARM which states that they must test 100% compatibility with the ARM v7 architecture. You can even get the source code for the processor core if you pay a large fee. Apple even release all the source for their changes to gcc to support objc and all the goodies that come with it. And don't go saying this is no multi-tasking OS. All the functionality is there underneath. If Apple choose not to confuse the user by showing a bash prompt, that is up to them ...
I don't try to be rude, but it's my nature. So, in any case, I'll try to be nice if you might care what I think.
The idea that I need the *source code* for the processor is non-sense. I mean, it doesn't even make sense at all. It's a piece of hardware. The "source code" is a circuit diagram! The first question is "what hardware are you running." That is actually yet to be answered by Apple AFAIK, although anyone with more money than me can feel free to break it open. Knowing that, it's an issue of how to code for it, but I'd hardly call it source code.
In terms of processors, they are useless without people who will write code for them. So I am highly doubtful a new hardware provider has Apple in the shackles of "Code for us or else!" Without people who know how to code or dissemble binary, architecture is absolute garbage. That would lead one to conclude that if it's super hush-hush, it's a software contract Apple initiated, not the hardware provider. I mean, take an Intel processor. Everyone knows how to code for it, right? Why go for something else if you don't like being uber secretive?
Although it's not relevant here, because you brought up, the idea of source code as it relates to hardware, I'll mention it here. There are some in the Linux field who disdain 'binary-blobs', but there are others who don't care, and if one provides even binary drivers and not source code, it's cool. Of course for a processor it's kind of a mess, but seriously, if a company is making a processor, you like to inform me that they gain revenue by not telling people how to code for it? That could only happen with a payoff, if it was true, which I personally doubt for now.
And with regard to Apple "releasing source code" this is literally just done so that "people like you" (not you personally, of course) can argue with "people like me" (actually, it's me) about how they release source code. Did you ever bother to look at the source code? Did you ever consider that it's a monstrosity beyond compare? There isn't documentation I ever saw released, and I personally feel like someone was hired to remove useful comments in the source code (presuming they might have existed) before its release. The OpenDarwin project is basically run by Aladdin, and he's been at it for a few years and the results are still not much of an OS. Undocumented and unhelpfully commented source code is about as helpful as whitespace code sent to postscript (google it if you like...). If you purport that Apple is so great in their release of source code, I would very kindly request you to make me a bootable, fully-functional, POSIX system based on their released source code. That isn't a jab of mockery. I really would like it. It's only mockery because it's so bloody difficult, because their methods are obtuse, their filestructure is obtuse, and no one even managed to compile anything that even BOOTS (don't worry about commands like shutdown or restart!) from within an Apple system itself, because their gcc is the largest pile of trash I ever saw. And I'd prefer not to me mocked on that last point.
And I have no real concern if the iPad ever will or won't be hacked. I only started posting here since I have no interest in it if I can't run Linux on it, pure and simple, and even my base interest is pretty low. Promoting Apple is of course why they are willing to pay so many profits to marketing and not to R&D. If you want to convince me Apple is not 100% market driven, explain to me why the use an extremely poor method of hiding and "encrypting" iPod shuffles if they are to play music, and disallowing them to play any media which is used as "media transfer mode" (ie: normal method of populating a USB storage device). Why? Cahoots with making money on songs.