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0 pointsLukeShu7y ago0 comments

Sure. But iOS doesn't have Bash (I don't think, even if it does: Then just ship GPLv2 Bash on iOS, and modern Bash on macOS where users might actually care). The GPLv3 of Bash doesn't infect the shared kernel or libraries between iOS and macOS, it's just the `/bin/sh` program. It's easy enough to check if it's being included in iOS.

"The reason we can't ship modern Bash on macOS is that we're concerned we might accidentally include Bash on iOS."?

(and /bin/sh on macOS is already sufficiently user-modifiable to satisfy GPLv3)

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Matt3o12_7y ago

Apple is pretty firm on no GPLv3 because accidentally shipping it on iOS can be pretty dangerous for them. Whether you agree with the decision to just not ship GPLv3 software (I don’t), I can understand apples concerns regarding GPLv3.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t surprise me if iOS had bash support even for just debug builds and Apple either had to worry about testing, building and maintaining two version of bash and still risk getting them mixed up and accidentally shipping some parts of the bash source code. This much easier to just never use GPLV3

belorn7y ago

Accidental shipping of IP which a company do not own is a constant risk. Companies sometimes accidental ship proprietary software, copyrighted images, copyrighted text, patented techniques, trademarked names, trademarked images, and more.

A Swedish copyright lobby organization committed copyright infringement on their own website. Bethesda game company had a trademark dispute with the developers of Minecraft. Apple and Samsung are constantly in patent war with each other. There is an almost unlimited number of cases where one company sue an other for contract and license disputes.

Shipping software is pretty dangerous, and there is no data to show that shipping GPLv3 licensed software is more likely to cause accidental infringement of someones IP than other licensed software.

ajross7y ago

> accidentally shipping it on iOS can be pretty dangerous

I read the same argument about GPLv2 in like 1994. To date, there remains no case law I'm aware of where a copyright holder "lost" anything by "accidentally" shipping GPL software. How many decades does it take for us to put this myth to rest?

int_19h7y ago

A lot, because it's hard to derive meaningful conclusions from something that's used so relatively little precisely because of licensing concerns.

Anyway, with v2, the concerns were more vague - you'd have to accidentally link something GPLv2. With v3, even just shipping the binary signed with a private key on a platform that requires said key to load it, is enough to potentially force disclosure of that key (and that is by design of GPLv3 - it wants to kill the TiVo model).

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