Why return type of producer methods in projected generic types with upper bound is Any? instead of upper bound type?

Language Design
1

I asked this question here on Stack Overflow and didn’t get any answer.

Consider this setup:

open class Base
open class Derived: Base()

interface Foo<T: Base> {
    fun produce(): T
    fun consume(aT: T)
}

Following functions are valid:

fun apply1(f: Foo<*>) {
    val p: Base = f.produce();
}

fun apply2(f: Foo<Derived>) {
    val p: Base = f.produce();
}

but this one is not:

fun apply3(f: Foo<in Derived>) {
    val p: Base = f.produce();
}

Type mismatch
Required: Base
Found: Any?

Generic type parameter T has an upper bound. So it could be safely considered as a sub type of Base as it is done in apply1 and apply2 . The question is why it is not valid to do the same when it is projected with in ?