Star Rebel EFI Allegedly Contains OSS Code Covered Under APSL
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 28th Oct 2009 14:09 UTC, submitted by Cytor
Hardware, Embedded Systems When Psystar announced it Rebel EFI package, the company was quickly accused of simply taking open source code, repackaging it, and selling it for USD 50. While selling open source code is not a problem, not making the source code available if the license demands it is. Netkas, famous OSX86 hacker, and a Russian site are now claiming they have found the smoking gun.
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RE[3]: Wait, what?
by koki on Wed 28th Oct 2009 17:16 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Wait, what?"
koki
Member since:
2005-10-17

Not talking about the comments, but what you wrote in the article. These are your own words:

Now, I place a certain amount of trust in Netkas' words, but his evidence isn't necessarily conclusive. More investigations into the matter will have to be performed to get more conclusive evidence. The Russian site has more information, but sadly, even though I know the Cyrillic alphabet, I don't know any Russian other than Правда and Перестройка, and I know enough about translation to not place any form of trust in automated translations (hint to Russian OSNews readers).

Assuming Netkas is right, this is of course a very bad thing. EULAs can fall off a cliff for all I care, but an open source license which covers distribution is a completely different thing, as any open source advocate and anyone with common sense will tell you. Breaking them constitutes a breach of copyright, which is a serious offence.

I'm not about ready to crucify Psystar just yet - first, let's await their response to this matter, as they might theoretically provide the source code upon request. Second, we do need more evidence (or someone needs to properly translate the Russian page). In any case, it doesn't look good.


If that's not speculative, then pigs fly. Cheap shot Thom, really.

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