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Comment by AaronFriel | Hacker News Reader

Removing python2 is great, but as someone who writes an awful lot of scripts and makefiles that need to run on Mac & Linux, I'd love for them to update bash and coreutils.

It's not fun discovering `uuidgen` has different args because my coworkers have a 2007 version of the program, or they think `pushd` works in a cross-platform makefile. Repeat those problems for every GNU utility.

A tiny little bit of GPL3 software won't kill them, and surely shipping up to date utilities is easier than backporting security fixes over nearly two decades.

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My personal opinion is we should be clear about why many companies are not contributing to or shipping GPLv3 software.

The schism over GPLv3 was widely known and discussed at the time the license was being drafted. Many companies told the FSF they would not be able to continue shipping or contributing under those terms. The FSF chose their own path and moved their projects to the new license, with predictable consequences.

I happen to think it's an unfortunate footgun that set back the free software movement but I can see why others might disagree. I also agree that the FSF was within their rights to make such changes. The FSF bears responsibility for the decision to prioritize perceived "anti-TIVO" concerns over unification of the free software movement.

> A tiny little bit of GPL3 software won't kill them

Depending on the way the code is hosted or used, there might not be such a thing as "a tiny little bit of GPL3"

There's a reason why the GPL3 license is so vague in parts about its boundaries and why many corporate lawyers see it as viral.

This was a big reason for why our entire eng team moved to linux

This seems like a lot when you're one brew install bash/zsh coreutils away. I have a script that installs all the GNU utils, and does the thing so that the you can use the g versions by their normal name. I haven't even noticed any of the outdated userspace.

> A tiny little bit of GPL3 software won't kill them, and surely shipping up to date utilities is easier than backporting security fixes over nearly two decades.

I don’t disagree at all but I’m not a lawyer at Apple, so I can’t speak to their general risk or not.

The good news is that the zsh included is at least recent and it is (thankfully) trivial to install and alias a newer version of bash, but I have totally been bit by this myself.

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