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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 council 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, 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
Why not micro? It's MIT-licensed [1] and easier to use straight off the bat.
[1] https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/blob/master/LICENSE