Meta.ath0

The tool chain was developed in academia for 6 years before they adopted [1]. With an incredibly pervasive BSD-esque license [2].

Thus, companies can use the code without giving themselves back. This is why Sony uses BSD based OS on the playstation [3]. Its cheap, they can modify it, and keep what changes they deem necessary.

And yes, I'm aware Apple has given back to the project. But it seems pretty obvious why they don't use the GCC when you consider how hard Apple has tried to purge the GPL from its OS [4]. And the legal battle NeXT had with the FSF/GNU [5].

I stand by, we won't see Apple open source it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Illinois/NCSA_Open_Source_License

[3] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU1MzA

[4] http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C#Popularization_through_NeXT

macOS grep is from FreeBSD, at least as of macOS Mojave (10.14). (Source code for 10.14 might be at https://opensource.apple.com/source/text_cmds/text_cmds-99/grep/grep.c.auto.html.) Not sure if it was ever GNU grep. Maybe before the big purge in 2011?

IME, most of the basic shell commands are either directly from FreeBSD or a project in the BSD universe. For example tar is from libarchive, a distinct project (see https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive) that DragonflyBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and macOS import and track. (But oddly not OpenBSD, which has evolved the 4.4BSD-Lite implementation.)

According to a 2012 accounting at http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/ (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990), macOS was down to 16 GPL packages in macOS 10.12 from 47 in macOS 10.5.

No. Apple don’t ship anything that is licensed under GPL v3 [0]. In fact, they are still shipping bash 3 (the last version under GPL v2) with Mac OS [1], released 16 years ago.

The decision is also affected by the Tivoization clause introduced to GPL v3.

> If MacOS included GPLv3 software, Apple wouldn't be able to pre-install it unless they provided all users with signing keys to install their own modified versions of the GPLv3 software on-target. Check out the GPLv3's "User Product" and "Installation Information" sections for more details - they're written in plain English, and are pretty clear. [2]

[0]: https://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20102563

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21819415

> Don't forget Jobs attempted to steal NeXt's fork of the GCC with Obj-C extensions. The FSF had to sue NeXt to get them to release their modifications.

Actually there was no lawsuit. NeXT released the patches after a warning: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/talks/LinuxTag-2011/compliance.html

> Stealing Free Software is cheap from a business perspective.

This is why I recommend everyone use AGPLv3 whenever possible (and consider changing the license on your old Free Software - you can do this if all of the contributors consent). Apple has been removing all GPLv3 software from Mac OS X over the past several years because v3 is incompatible with their goals of totalitarian computing: http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/

Can you point to actual statements by any company on "why we avoid the GPL?"

Here is a great example of Google reversing course on the AGPL (when they reversed their decision to ban AGPL code from Google Code in Sep 2010):

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_source_licenses/

Apple also _still_ ships GPL code in macOS Sierra 10.12:

http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/

People use GPL software, extensively.

Any use of GPL software is a compliment to the software authors.

Any contribution back to the software will improve it for everyone. Would it really be so hard for Apple to maintain a GPLv2 fork of bash that backported the security fixes, a la RedHat?

> A company can't ever fire a customer.

Why not?

> to speak of firing customers is an abusive cognitive power play.

The guy responsible for the term "fired" was well known for abusive power plays - http://meta.ath0.com/2015/03/17/etymology-of-youre-fired/

> Patterson had a way to deal with executives who particularly displeased him. in a previous case, he had the businessman’s desk and chair dragged out onto the lawn, where they were set on fire. Apparently Watson’s desk was similarly dragged out and burned, and the man himself was dismissed. When other employees asked where Watson was, Patterson simply said “Fired.”