bash

As I understand it, it's more difficult than that... though I'm not a lawyer. Let's say {some company} and Apple have a cross patent licensing for some set of patents. Apple releases some softer under GPLv3. {Some company} sues someone else for a patent in bash. Since Apple licenses that patent and distributes bash, Apple is now obligated ("must act to shield") the distribution of bash that includes that patent. If you distribute a covered work knowingly relying on a patent license, you must act to shield downstream users against the possible patent infringement claims from which your license protects you. That wording of "knowingly relying on a patient license" and "must act to shield downstream users" are things that lawyers don't want to touch with a 10 foot pole. Would it mean that Apple would be required to defend the company

> That's why many commercial companies don't include GPL code - see Apple. This is wrong in a couple ways. First, Apple ships plenty of GPL code. https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/bash/blob/bash-13... as an example. What Apple does not ship is GPLv3 code. GPLv3 had two major changes around patents and "tivoization". The tivoization clause in particular forces changes that break Apple's security model for their hardware, and is probably the core reason they do not ship GPLv3 software.

They inlined the code here: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/bash/commit/9817a...

It is -because- Apple is opposed to Open Source that they are unable to even ship a version of bash from the past 10 years out of fear of the big bad GPLv3 licensing might make them actually allow public auditing of their proprietary OS. The Apple commitment to Open Source is mostly one direction and largely limited to cased where they have no legal choice such as GPL. They allow some contributions to happen to appease Apple engineers they want to retain, but as a whole Apple is fundamentally committed to walled gardens. https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/bash/tree/bash-12...