Why MacOS make version is outdated?¶

| macos | make | gnu |

MacOS make version is 3.81. But the latest GNU Make version is 4.4.1. Why so?

➜ make --version
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for i386-apple-darwin11.3.0

The reason is licensing.
⚠️ 3.81 is GPLv2, 3.82+ and later is GPLv3.

GNU make 3.81 released!¶

Item posted by Paul D. Smith on Sat 01 Apr 2006 07:25:13 AM UTC.

The next stable version of GNU make, version 3.81, has been released and is available for download from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/.

This version contains many bug fixes, as well as feature enhancements. There are also some backward-incompabilities. Please see the NEWS file that comes with the GNU make distribution for complete details on user-visible changes.

GNU Make under GPLv3 going forward¶

Item posted by Paul D. Smith on Wed 04 Jul 2007 07:39:26 PM UTC.

All future releases of GNU Make will be licensed under GPLv3+ (GPL version 3 or later). I committed the necessary changes to the licensing and copyright statements into CVS today.

GNU Make 3.81 will be the last release under the previous license (GPLv2 or later).

You can read HN discussion regarding this topic.