Please release nano under less restrictive license so we can use it
lists.gnu.org
lists.gnu.org
This isn't true. There's nothing in the GPLv3 that says Apple can't ever use it. Apple doesn't want to use GPLv3 programs, because they don't want to stop committing the bad behaviors that it disallows.
> Hmm, I've been curious why Apple switched back to Pico. I'm sorry they seem to have declared war on GPL software, but this seems to be recent revelation. For years OS X distributed nano with seemingly no issues. What changed?
What changed is the GPLv3. Apple was fine to ship software that was under the v2 of the license, but that changed when the v3 was released and most (all?) GNU software jumped to it. (This is all leaving aside why Apple lawyers chose to go this route.)
It’s the same reason why macOS is stuck on an ancient version of bash. Here are some more details: https://jmmv.dev/2019/11/macos-bash-baggage.html
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/4/18651872/apple-macos-catal...
The thread is interesting for other reasons, mostly OP ignoring obvious solutions offered by respondents and what would look like an implicit demand from Apple if OP didn’t seem so personally interested in the outcome.
It’s also interesting because the responses are surprisingly consistent in minimizing potential conflicting views and generally just encouraging free use and appropriate upstream contribution, a stark contrast to how a lot of FOSS advocates present this divide.
Which obvious solutions? The only one I saw getting ignored was the suggestion to use MacPorts. That's great for a machine, but I was under the impression OP wanted nano to come back in a future version of macOS for all machines.
But I may have missed something.
So, for instance, a GPL-licensed git client like GitUp[1] was fine to use, and didn't require clearance. You could totally also install a newer version of Nano if you wanted, too.
But, the rules _were_ somewhat vague and scary-sounding, so many engineers I worked with took the rules to mean "absolutely no GPL software under any circumstances".
What email is actually talking about is the option to bundle Nano _with the OS_, which Apple can't do with GPLv3 software. That's why for years, for example, macOS has had an absolutely ancient version of bash (before the license was updated to GPLv3), and switched to zsh in newer versions of the OS.
So, you could use any text editor you feel like, but if the project you are writing required a GPLv3 compiler, that would be a problem? That makes sense.
they could. they just don't want to
BTW, Apple stopped updating bundled GPL software in 2007, when GNU switched to GPL v3 (e.g. try /bin/bash --version)
If you goal to maximize adoption and really your user freedoms it is no good to force them to release changes under the same license as GPL tries to do. And many companies found out maintaning their own fork is costly anyway and so it ofen makes sense to contribute to upstream.
If your goal is to ensure there is no commercial derivatives... with raise of the cloud for many classes of software GPL became useless for protection, this is why we see raise of SSPL etc.
When I contribute to OSS (which I don't do frequently enough...) I feel certainly better if it's under GPL than a permissive license. Why should my voluntary work support a business model like Apple's? (Not that I like Google's business model either, but at least they play fair with GPLv2 AFAIK.)
True. But Linus clearly said that he thinks that the GPLv3 is overreaching which is why he would never adopt it.
The Unlicense, the WTFPL, MIT, BSD, probably others I’m forgetting.
What's the point in maximizing adoption if it requires forsaking your primary goal, which is user freedoms?
In fact, similar thing happens with vim. It's not installed by default on my distro of choice (mint). You have to apt install it.
I wonder how this works with members of the Google Chrome team, for example, discussing roadmap questions on Google Groups.
I do like the idea that GPL prevents big corps from taking advantage of programmers, but the idea that a GPL program is inherently better than a proprietary program written by an independent developer no longer makes sense to me, though independent proprietary software is often abandoned. But more importantly, it doesn't seem fair when a company makes an AGPL devops tool and then a bigger corp just sells that product as a service. When companies like MongoDB decide to change their licenses so that Amazon doesn't steal all their customers, I don't feel bad about it at all. I have no skin in this game but it blows my mind that there are FSF people who defend massive corporations essentially reselling a smaller company's work solely for the sake of ideological purity. Someone can correct me if I've been misinformed here.
Which doesn’t help the FOSS developers extract money out of the cloud users because they can just use the free (for whatever value of ‘free’ Amazon provides) bundled version without any support contacts or whatever.
If your entire business model is based on giving away the software you can see how this might be a problem, no?
I would rather just never read GPL source fullstop. I don't want the copyleft to taint me and inadvertently reproduce copyleft code where I can't, so I will just avoid reading it entirely. I try to avoid using GPL libraries entirely if I can help it since inevitably I may need to circle back and read some of the source.
It's an interesting idea and I cheer those who manage to live in an ideologically pure bubble but I don't think it's fair to say GPL is strictly more free than BSD/MIT.
> Apple has been moving away from the direction of openness and toward absolute software and hardware control for a long long time, presumably proportional to the amount of market share they maintained at the time - i.e. embracing open standards and software as the little guy in the late 90s, stomping them out as much as possible now as a market leader. I sincerely hope this is not a surprise to anyone on this list.
I don't think that's an unreasonable take.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store...
> Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't allow that. This specific case involves other issues, but this is the one that's most unique and deserves explanation.
Apple's desire for complete control over their walled garden is incompatible with the GPL.
On the contrary, this sense of entitlement of requiring access to source of modified code just because someone used the open source project is what drives people away from GPL.