There’s a similar probably-unwarranted-on-paper fear of GPL in other ecosystems but I think GNU/Free Software advocates are often eager to reinforce the fear, presumably for ideological reinforcement. I’ve avoided GPL dependencies in my own projects because of express concerns in the team despite the fact that I don’t need a lawyer to know we’d be in compliance with the licenses.

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.

zapzupnz

> mostly OP ignoring obvious solutions offered by respondents

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.

zarzavat

I’ve heard that Apple employees are banned from installing GPLv3 software on their work machines (maybe someone who has worked there can confirm?), so this may be more relevant for Apple employees than actual users of MacOS who can just get nano from a third party package manager.

_rend

Not quite true, though while I was there, many fellow employees misunderstood the rules to mean that you couldn't use GPL software on your machine. At least as of a few years ago, the official ruling was that any open-source software _required_ for you to do your job had to be approved by an internal oversight group of sorts, and GPL and AGPL software was right out. You could, however, use any open-source software you wanted (including GPL and AGPL) so long as it was (1) for personal use, (2) not absolutely mandatory for you to do your job (e.g. some niche software or library propping up your employment), and (3) there was some other alternative tool that you could use if necessary.

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.

[1]: https://github.com/git-up/GitUp