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Meta.ath0
meta.ath0.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Meta.ath0 is a personal blog by Jay Maynard-era author on open source licensing, social networks, privacy, security and the JavaScript ecosystem.
What HN saysHN links it mainly for 'Apple's great GPL purge', which commenters cite to explain why macOS ships old GNU tools and avoids GPLv3 software.
31HN people shared it
18linked it in comments
16stories submitted
1.0Kstory points
3 years agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Apple’s great GPL purge19 people · 421 points · first shared 2012 · 205 comments on HN
- 2Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)2 people · 376 points · first shared 2021 · 166 comments on HN
- 3A Screeching Voice of the Minority1 people · 123 points · first shared 2021 · 93 comments on HN
- 4Truecrypt warrant canary confirmed?1 people · 65 points · first shared 2014 · 22 comments on HN
- 5No, I am not interested in joining your proprietary social network1 people · 7 points · first shared 2014 · 2 comments on HN
- 6Can we fix social media?1 people · 7 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 7How and why social media came to be awful (2019)1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 8Why is the JavaScript ecosystem like this1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 9Thoughts on Social Networks1 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 10)from1 people · first shared 2016
- 11Cleaning up bash customizations1 people · first shared 2023
- 12Googleplusungood1 people · first shared 2012
- 13Etymology of youre fired1 people · first shared 2017
What HN people wrote when they linked it
maxloh · 2023-03-02
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
dahart · 2021-11-02
> They made an OS that users can't bear to upgrade because of removed features
I thought the story was that Apple had a problem with GNU licensing, and that was the reason everything got locked to ~2007 software, forcing everyone who wants to use bash and GNU utils to resort to a package manager.
Yeah… googling it, people have long been saying GPL v3 is what Apple has a problem with:
http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18653485
wahern · 2020-11-25
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… 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.
fierarul · 2020-11-16
Apple has banned GPL from macOS quite some time ago and has been pruning GPL apps. See http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
teddyh · 2020-07-30
Related, for more context: http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
minraws · 2020-03-23
Only works if you are the sole copyright holder, and not using code from someone else.
> https://github.com/peter-iakovlev/Telegram/issues/157
> http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
> https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/06/04/why-does-macos-catalina-use-zsh-i…
iooi · 2018-12-13
Somewhat related, I just found out that OSX ships with units version 1.0.
The prompt gives "586 units, 56 prefixes" instead of the post's "1311 units, 63 prefixes".
So if you want to try this you can `brew install gnu-units` and run gunits instead:
"3070 units, 109 prefixes, 109 nonlinear units"
It's pretty annoying that OSX ships with such outdated utilities [1]
[1] http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
hs86 · 2018-08-25
This reminds me of http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
Usually, there are alternatives to these former GPLv2, now GPL3 tools and I wonder why Apple just does not replace them.
sounds · 2017-05-12
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_license…
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?
grawlinson · 2016-11-12
Is Apple still reducing dependencies on GPL code?
http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
sedachv · 2016-10-11
> 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/
jcbeard · 2016-08-24
See article (http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/)from previous HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990
Also, GNU's bulletin on Apple Boycott: https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull18.html#SEC13
And also this article which explains why apple is BSD mostly: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/apples-os-x-is-not-linux/
TAForObvReasons · 2016-08-24
http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/ is the correct link, parent needs to put a space before the close paren
raw text: http://hastebin.com/raw/zohoxaxuyi
trengrj · 2015-10-24
An OS X web server... As another comment mentioned OS X is hindered by the fact they refuse to use GPL 3 code http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/. This results in their userspace code being out of date (i.e. they still use bash version 3.2) and having bugs like these.
Flimm · 2023-05-06
I found this blog post really helpful in explaining the difference:
https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/zshbash-startup-files-load…
It references this blog post:
https://meta.ath0.com/2007/10/23/cleaning-up-bash-customizations/
harryf · 2017-04-05
> 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.”
rehack · 2012-01-05
For me its the 5th one now. It shows another blog based on this post( http://meta.ath0.com/2012/01/05/googleplusungood/ ) as 2nd in the search for "jon mitchell jury duty".
valarauca1 · 2014-10-22
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_L…
[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