read that this companion command did not do anything but the info i read it in was couple months old. has it been patched to work now? thanks

It always worked for me. As far as I remember.

Eh... sort of, it only really works if you're sneaking and don't want your companion running off and shooting your enemies. But if your enemies are alert to your presence, forget it, your companion will be gone.

Passive means they will only attack to defend you, not that they wont attack, if someone spots you, they will engage them to prevent you from getting hurt.

I always put my companions on aggressive, but whenever I do go passive, it has always worked.

Never worked with ED any good. Last time I lined up a shot while hidden then he trumps his battle music and charged in lasers blazing

No, any nearby threats and they'll whip out their guns, knives, or star growling or whatever, and they'll start moving forward and looking for trouble, they'll open doors to get to it, and just generally change the pace you usually move at (if a stealth character) and frack up your Chi - pulling you into gunfights and fisticuffs you could have avoided with sneak kills. But eh, heh, s'all good fun.

I don't like having companions along when I'm going into any place, so they spend the majority of time waiting outside of places. Caves, huts, shacks, houses, factories... they're too much of a liability. Good for company across the Mojave though, nothing gets the jump on you... shame there aren't any fast-moving creatures like Yao-Guai kicking about... :pinch:

It's mainly for sneaking.

A passive companion will pull out their weapon when they sense a hostile target nearby, but stay put until detected. An aggressive companion will begin actively hunting for said hostile target.

In short folks Passive was never pacifist

This.
And their radius detection is why they can be frustrating indoors (radius ignores walls/line of sight concepts). Altho for myself, I don't mind the blood thirsty little devils running around like hyper-manic imps;they amuse me.

I think how it's meant to work is subjective to a sense.

For me, Passive wasn't to my liking. As soon as the [CAUTION] meter showed in sneak, they just go running off of their own accord when I could of easily reverted it back to [HIDDEN] and continuing the actions I wanted to take. I prefer that they follow me rather than the other way around, which seems to be the case on both settings. There's such a small difference between the two that it's hard to even consider them two separate settings in most scenarios.

Whatever it does, it's pretty subtle and I wouldn't call it 'passive'.
To me, 'passive' can be three things:
1. wait till I shoot
2. wait till I'm getting hit
3. wait till enemy is close