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Apple refuses to ship gpl3 software for seemingly no sane reason (judging by the fact other commercial software vendors including e.g. windows don't have this i

by emn13 5y ago

Apple refuses to ship gpl3 software for seemingly no sane reason (judging by the fact other commercial software vendors including e.g. windows don't have this issue) probably explains the command line issues; apples' tools are an entirely different codebase from the tools in linux distros. And unless you actively compare systems, you might never notice the apple versions are different. It's been this way since OSX day 1 IIRC, so it's a little surprising the apple versions are still apparently inferior (if the grandparent poster is anything to go by, haven't used em in years), but it's conceivable the CLI just isn't an apple priority. I wish they'd just give up already and copy as much (of the CLI-relevant stuff) as possible from linux, and accept that they'll need to give up a tiny amount of control over a small sliver of their OS - a sliver that they never wrote in the first place and also can't really change the api of, because that would break all kinds of things, which renders their ability to close source somewhat moot anyhow. And most users never use this stuff! The linux-conventional gnu variants are well maintained and usable in both MS world and linux world - having CLI scripts that are more easily portable across three OS's would be great. Apple's toxic control-freak nature really hurts here, and mostly just their users. I really don't get it. Anyhow, there are workarounds (but e.g. homebrew is hit and miss), it's mostly just an annoyance they're even necessary.

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
It’s a perfectly reasonable reason: they were forced to open source their objective-C compiler that was built on gcc and decided they didn’t ever want to be in that position again. The BSD tools are annoying, if you’re used to the Linux versions, but they’re perfectly reasonable implementations of the relevant POSIX utilities (better than busybox, for example).
- SeanLuke 5y ago
  What? NeXT open-sourced their Objective-C gcc extensions in 1992, a half-decade before Apple bought them.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    Yeah, it’s a Steve Jobs thing. As far as I can tell, this is a significant factor in the rise of LLVM. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158017
    - rodgerd 5y ago
      It didn't help that rms was using it as a "hah hah that time I put one over on Steve Jobs" a decade later when I saw him speak. No idea if he still does.
      - emn13 5y ago
        I sure hope apple has a better reason for shipping unnecessarily impractical software than some pet peeve by a now-deceased CEO. That would be kind of insane.
    - jaytaylor 5y ago
      > jordigh on March 6, 2015 > They're basically achieving their dream now with Swift, though. I don't expect them to ever release that source. I don't think there is any precedent for Apple releasing source code after the fact. I wonder, to what degree is this still the case today? Has Apple's position on Open Source changed in the past half+ decade?
      - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
        I don’t think it’s changed about GPL: GPL3 made things even less friendly to what they want, so they’ve started doing things like switching to zsh instead of bash. LLVM/Swift are open-sourced, but not GPL
    - filmgirlcw 5y ago
      And here we should note that LLVM (by its creator who already worked on it at Apple at this point) was offered to GNU and the FSF in 2005 but were ignored/chided [1] until a decade later when GCC/GNU/FSF realized what they had been offered ten years earlier and then had to grapple with what they had rejected, once LLVM had taken hold [2, 3], including proposals to try to refuse LLVM patches to emacs, out of some sense of petty NIH thing [the whole thread 2 and 3 are part of]. [1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html [2]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00783.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00... [3]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00640.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00...
- not2b 5y ago
  No, GPL2 made them do that, and even so they were ok with it and used to pay people to work on GCC for the Mac in the old days. They rejected GPL3 specifically.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > they were forced to open source their objective-C compiler that was built on gcc A better phrasing: They were unable to close-source an existing GPL'd compiler.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I think the above phrasing is fair, and technically correct. You can closed-source a fork of GPL software. It's extremely common for companies do this while software is in development. It's the moment that someone distributes the software that the license requires source distribution. Some people/companies never distribute their forks. This is why newer revisions like AGPL were written.
csdreamer7 5y ago
Probably because of the 'provide the keys' and not sue for any anti-circumvention tech in the GPL v3. The anti-tivo provision. Not sure if it applies to standalone system utilities, but I bet it is an internal blanket ban on the GPL v3. Apple is very fond of locking down their hardware. Google took a very strong stance against the AGPL-even banning it from their own public code repo service before they shut it down.

by emn13 5y ago

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago

It’s a perfectly reasonable reason: they were forced to open source their objective-C compiler that was built on gcc and decided they didn’t ever want to be in that position again. The BSD tools are annoying, if you’re used to the Linux versions, but they’re perfectly reasonable implementations of the relevant POSIX utilities (better than busybox, for example).

SeanLuke 5y ago
What? NeXT open-sourced their Objective-C gcc extensions in 1992, a half-decade before Apple bought them.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  Yeah, it’s a Steve Jobs thing. As far as I can tell, this is a significant factor in the rise of LLVM. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158017
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    It didn't help that rms was using it as a "hah hah that time I put one over on Steve Jobs" a decade later when I saw him speak. No idea if he still does.
    - emn13 5y ago
      I sure hope apple has a better reason for shipping unnecessarily impractical software than some pet peeve by a now-deceased CEO. That would be kind of insane.
  - jaytaylor 5y ago
    > jordigh on March 6, 2015 > They're basically achieving their dream now with Swift, though. I don't expect them to ever release that source. I don't think there is any precedent for Apple releasing source code after the fact. I wonder, to what degree is this still the case today? Has Apple's position on Open Source changed in the past half+ decade?
    - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
      I don’t think it’s changed about GPL: GPL3 made things even less friendly to what they want, so they’ve started doing things like switching to zsh instead of bash. LLVM/Swift are open-sourced, but not GPL
  - filmgirlcw 5y ago
    And here we should note that LLVM (by its creator who already worked on it at Apple at this point) was offered to GNU and the FSF in 2005 but were ignored/chided [1] until a decade later when GCC/GNU/FSF realized what they had been offered ten years earlier and then had to grapple with what they had rejected, once LLVM had taken hold [2, 3], including proposals to try to refuse LLVM patches to emacs, out of some sense of petty NIH thing [the whole thread 2 and 3 are part of]. [1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html [2]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00783.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00... [3]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00640.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00...
not2b 5y ago
No, GPL2 made them do that, and even so they were ok with it and used to pay people to work on GCC for the Mac in the old days. They rejected GPL3 specifically.
jhgb 5y ago
> they were forced to open source their objective-C compiler that was built on gcc A better phrasing: They were unable to close-source an existing GPL'd compiler.
- kube-system 5y ago
  I think the above phrasing is fair, and technically correct. You can closed-source a fork of GPL software. It's extremely common for companies do this while software is in development. It's the moment that someone distributes the software that the license requires source distribution. Some people/companies never distribute their forks. This is why newer revisions like AGPL were written.

csdreamer7 5y ago

Probably because of the 'provide the keys' and not sue for any anti-circumvention tech in the GPL v3. The anti-tivo provision. Not sure if it applies to standalone system utilities, but I bet it is an internal blanket ban on the GPL v3. Apple is very fond of locking down their hardware. Google took a very strong stance against the AGPL-even banning it from their own public code repo service before they shut it down.