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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], releas
by maxloh 4y ago
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/ https://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20102563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20102563
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21819415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21819415
- jasomill 4y agoApple doesn't ship bash with iOS, and you don't need signing keys to install modified versions of bash on macOS. But Apple holds lots of patents[1], and while it's hard for me to imagine Apple enforcing patents against users of bash, I can easily imagine Apple lawyers making a strong enough case to management that the potential value of all patent licenses that would be implicitly granted by GPL 3 was likely to exceed the cost of feature-freezing or replacing affected macOS components that they would have agreed to a blanket ban. Note that I'm not defending this decision: for the record, I detest software patents, dislike tivoization, and the only problem I have with GPL 3 is when companies that might otherwise contribute to GPL 3 projects are uncomfortable with it. Which is unfortunate, but certainly not a flaw in the license itself. [1] https://patents.google.com/?assignee=%22Apple+Inc%22&oq=assignee:%22Apple+Inc%22 https://patents.google.com/?assignee=%22Apple+Inc%22&oq=assi...