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No, they are not pathological liars, they are just rather unsophisticated quite young guys with little business experience, stumbling into something which is far bigger than they had expected.

The thing I don't understand at all about this is the hysterical rage which Apple devotees direct at these particular guys. They don't express the same rage at Quo, which seems to be doing the same thing. Or PearC, or freedompc.co.uk.

And they never address the real reason why the situation, not Psystar itself, but the situation in general, is so important. This was perfectly articulated in the following quote:

Fred von Lohmann, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for Internet free speech issues, thinks the brothers just might prevail. "We've lived 100-plus years with the basic proposition that if you bought it, you own it," he says. "We don't let vendors reach into your living room and micromanage how you use a product. Why should Apple get away with it?"

That is the question.

The further question I would ask of all the Apple devotees is this. Do you really want all software makers to be able to refuse permission to install their software on some brands of hardware? Are you sure? Do you really want MS to be able to ban dual booting of Windows, on Apple branded computers? Do you want people to be able to ban running their software in VMs, but only on VMs running on Macs? When someone installs on a Mac in defiance of a EULA, are you going to be out there cheering for the software supplier, and demanding that he has the right to enforce his EULA? In the name of preserving the integrated end user experience perhaps?

The rage at Psystar in particular is not because they are doing anything different than the others you mentioned but that they get mentioned on this and every news site almost daily, they are an easy target.

Personally i think this whole "poor boys" shtick is bullshit. There are plenty of ways they could handled this without resorting to stealing software. If one of them really were a "software expert" he could have put together a decent enough distro, help out with Etoile, possibly even make his own OS. However all he is a hack and a lazy one at that, nothing they do couldn't be done by a reasonably tech savvy geek and some time. All they are really doing is forcing Apple's hand into adopting DRM in future versions. When that happens then they won't have won, in-fact everyone will have lost.

I was talking about the supposed stealing of opensource software without attribution, giving back to original community and/or not releasing the source code to their work according to the original license. That is called "stealing" from the community. Not everything is about Apple Thom.

There is a difference between reselling used stuff, and making a business out of selling new copies of a software you are not licensed to sell.

Thom, no offense but I find that very troubling, if you don't get that very basic difference.

That is, if the software is indeed licensed. Various judges think otherwise.

If they aren't the judges involved in the case, their opinions mean nothing, period.

They're not stealing anything. They purchase the copies that get installed and shipped just like most other OSX x86 people. The difference is that instead of just doing it for your own computer they are assembling and shipping entirely functional computer with OSX installed and significantly more reasonable prices than Apple does for admitted slightly better casing, however the rest of the components are every bit as good as what Apple ships and charges far more for.

Apple apologists and fanbois are funny...

I USED to buy macs when I could strip their overpriced crap down to reasonable prices and then add in components for an overall savings of $1000s, e.g. $500 to Apple for a hdd that I can buy at a local retail outlet for $80 or $40-50 online bulk? $300 for DRAM that I could pick up for $80?(probably even better quality as you never know what OEM DRAM you're getting from Apple ta any given time) $300 for a $150 GPU? gets even better now that you can add in CPUs which are widely available at better prices with x86 v. when they use ppc. Sure it takes me about 20m to install everything, and I end up with a heap of lowend GPUs and low capacity memory modules. (The microscopic hdds I used to leave installed as the OS drive.)

And let's not even go into the PSU that Apple tends to ship with, as half the time they're underspecced or pretty shoddy quality OEM stuff that ends up also needing replacement.

Now it gets even worse with Apple notebooks today and no easily user-replaceable batteries. This is a rather cynical Apple tactic IMNHO as I expect they think that they'll just get another $2000 or so from the customer instead of them spending $100 on a new battery every few years. (Not everyone really needs a newer notebook every few years, and Apple notebooks have also been lagging in the discrete GPU area for some time now, again...)

Edited 2009-11-13 16:34 UTC

[QUOTE]This was perfectly articulated in the following quote:

Fred von Lohmann, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for Internet free speech issues, thinks the brothers just might prevail. "We've lived 100-plus years with the basic proposition that if you bought it, you own it," he says. "We don't let vendors reach into your living room and micromanage how you use a product. Why should Apple get away with it?"[/QUOTE]

The difference being of course if we put it in our living room, reverse engineer it and then sell a product based on this reverse engineering... that _is_ a violation of copyright! and always has been! This is what they are doing.

KRR

And - here comes the hard one - do you really want it to be possible for the GPL to permit use of GPL licensed software on any computer whatever, as long as it is not a Mac?

Still liking them apples?

Are you kidding? A lot of people have been pretty straightforward at pointing out the obvious conflict with reality that the business plan for Pysstar was.

Whilst we can choose to believe their story or not, I can certainly believe that the Internet is one big lynch mob. Getting on the wrong side of Anonymous is not a good place to be.

You point being?

I believe the point here is that it doesn't matter if your right or wrong, if the public opinion on the net is against you, you will be massacred online.

And, any attempt to defend themselves (like this article) is then just taken as ammo against them. On the Internet, if people believe you are wrong, then _you are wrong_ and that's final, like it or not.

I haven't read the article because I don't want to include their personal story in my judgement of the company's actions.

... in the article, the Pysstar guys go off on the OSX86 community. It takes a special kind of dementia.

It's also a good thing to put on his CV I guess...

Thom, that takes too much effort

We want a handy dandy button that says "Forever ignore any topic with this tag".

Since desktop computers have been invented people want a button that says "think for me", but it ain't ever going to come.

Sorry to be pedantic, but who *exactly* is Mac?

Assumptions are dangerous, but I assumed they meant Apple.

He drive's the truck. You should have seen him holding the back doors closed all like; "no.. I won't release this.. I won't..."

(couldn't resist)

The parent tafficing drugs; yes, that one's a clear violation of the law.

The child; maybe you have reference to the case law showing that his actions have been found in criminal conflict with existing laws? (or maybe we hold the "they broke the law" until "the law" decides the case)

Not to nitpick but....
1. The father was a guy who bought coke (I don't know the details but considering they were in Miami and not Peru, I'll assume he neither grew nor processed it), and then put it in smaller bags and charged way more for it than what he paid (for most of the drug dealers I've known, I'd guess he made upwards of %100 profits). Also his buyers were people who had addictions and likely little choice as to whether or not they were going to be repeat customers.

2. The sons buy computer parts, an OSX install disk, and use information they found for free online to do the manual job of putting OSX on the computers they built. If they get repeat customers, it's because people like the job they have done of selecting hardware, putting it together, and installing an operating system on it which was not meant to run on said hardware.

Seems to me like the brothers have a much harder job (even if it is only a couple minutes worth of work per machine). Not to mention the fact that they're probably making much less profit than their father (especially considering a lawsuits costs $$$$ and going to jail does not).

All this without even touching the fact that Apple has the easiest job of all, and are probably making higher profit margins than either psystar or the cocaine dealing father.

Don't ask me how I know this stuff...I just do;-)