Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 21st Sep 2009 08:44 UTC, submitted by Cytor
There are several options out there if you wan to run Mac OS X on your non-Apple labelled computer, but one of them appears to be in serious trouble. It has been uncovered that the EFI-X module is nothing more than a USB stick with a DRM chip, with code from the hackintosh community on it - without attribution. On top of that, its firmware update utility uses LGPL code - again, without attribution.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
You are thinking of buying software to be somehow equal to buying hardware, which borders on sophistry. When you are buying software, you are not buying jack shit. You are transferring some money to the reseller, but you don't own the product you bought in a way you would own, say, a wrench you buy in hardware store. You are just licensing the software under whatever terms the whims of the license provider dictate.
The is the most common misunderstanding about buying software. People have been indoctrinated to believe it but it ain't true. Look in the laws, you will not find any article that states software is sold in a different way than books or televisions.
Still not convinced? The law defines what a sales is. I'm living in the Netherlands, our law defines a sale as:
"Koop is de overeenkomst waarbij de een zich verbindt een zaak te geven en de ander om daarvoor een prijs in geld te betalen."
Freely translated:
"Sale is the agreement whereby one commits itself to give a good and the other to pay a price in money for it."
Translation of laws is difficult. The limitation of this translation is that I translate "zaak" with "good", while "good" is actualy the translation for "goed". They mean different things in Dutch law, but luckily it is not relevant for this discussion.
As you can see the purchase of a copy of a computer program perfectly matches this definition, therefore, by law, software is sold, not licensed! Other countries have their own definitions of a sale, but none will exclude software.
Now, copyright law. Copyright law deals with copies, and by copying you create new copies. Copies can be sold. Conclusion again. Software is sold, not licensed.
By the way, it is legally not impossible to license a copy. That requires a special agreement that does not match the definition in a law what a sale is. Sounds extremely logical: If you pay in a shop for something that does not become your property, it sounds reasonable that you make a special agreement about it.
Now you can also understand why EULA's do not hold in most countries. If you own a television nobody except you has any right to tell what you do with it. The TV is your property. Once you sold a copy of a computer program, copyright law may prevent you from copying it, but as long as you will not violate copyright, nobody has a right to tell you what to do with the copy. The copy is your property.
This logic appears to be even valid for the U.S., where many people claim EULA's to be valid. However, it seems that in .us "sales agreement" needs to be more explicit rather than implicit for the logic to hold, it seems one can implicitely license software there, where in European countries one can be rather sure that any program you buy is a "sales agreement" unless agreed otherwise.
Edited 2009-09-21 22:40 UTC