Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sipefree 5229 days ago
You're kidding, right? It sounds like you don't know how the GPL applies to them or you think Apple is really dumb.

There is absolutely no reason to move those apps. They're binaries. The GPL only threatens them if the use free code in a nonfree program and don't distribute the source.

The only other option is Apple doing it out of spite, which would be stupid on all accounts.

2 comments

At the very least Apple Legal is not comfortable shipping GPLv3 packages in OS X, even as binaries. This might be stupid - IANAL.

The GPL isn't the only other reason they might move more command-line functionality into a separate download - OS installation and download size is another.

There's some previous discussion on this point here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 Someone noticed there are less and less GPL apps being distributed with Mac OS X.