Free software activist Richard Stallman has withdrawn an accusation that Apple's Mac OS X contained a backdoor after admitting there was no evidence to substantiate his earlier claims.
Stallman has repeatedly levelled charges that Apple could forcibly impose software changes in Mac OS X. He now admits his opinion was influenced by unsubstantiated gripes against Apple's operating system and that there is "no evidence that Apple has installed software changes without the user's permission."

"We have no way to verify that there is no backdoor in Mac OS X that could install changes without permission, but that is no basis to claim there is one," Stallman writes in a post on his FSF blog on Monday. "I apologize for repeating a criticism of Mac OS which I cannot substantiate and must presume is false."

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