Linked by Nescio on Mon 9th Mar 2009 08:05 UTC
Numerous irrelevant issues and feelings about them are ventilated in comments on the case. However, there are only two important issues. One is what the law is, the other is what we think the law should be.
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RE: Article missing part about decrypting binaries
by wanderingk88 on Mon 9th Mar 2009 14:18
in reply to "Article missing part about decrypting binaries"
Member since:2008-06-26
RE: Article missing part about decrypting binaries
by NathanHill on Mon 9th Mar 2009 15:27
in reply to "Article missing part about decrypting binaries"
Member since:2006-10-06
This is a great reply, because it is what this analysis (intentionally or unintentionally) leaves out.
I think this case would be different if it was just a guy going and buying a copy of Mac OS X and installing it on his Dell. But it's not. It's on a whole different level.
Psystar is buying copies of Mac OS X and reselling them. (According to copyright law, this is okay.) Psystar is preinstalling Leopard on the machines. (Uh oh - this means there was an EULA.) Psystar is modifying parts of Leopard to get it to load. (Hacking the system, changing the system to point to Psystar servers, etc... Uh oh.) I just don't see how Psystar wins at all.
Sure, if they had just bought copies of Leopard and sent you a Leopard-compatible machine so you can do the work yourself - this might not be an issue. But that is not what is going on here.
Guys, nerds, OSSers - Apple is not trying to shut down people from going and installing Leopard on their netbook or whatever. That is not what is at issue here.
Psystar is going down.
RE[2]: Article missing part about decrypting binaries
by Soulbender on Mon 9th Mar 2009 16:11
in reply to "RE: Article missing part about decrypting binaries"
Member since:2005-08-18
Psystar is modifying parts of Leopard to get it to load. (Hacking the system, changing the system to point to Psystar servers, etc... Uh oh.)
Uh oh? That's only a problem if the EULA is actually enforcable. Modifying something and reselling it is not a copyright violation, as long as it's not a copy that you're reselling. Same way I can buy a book, change some text and then sell it to someone else. I can, of course, not pretend that the changes I made are in the original or that I'm the original author but that's a different story.
For simplicities sake I'm ignoring DMCA since it has no effect in most of the world.
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Member since:
2007-06-12
The big 'issue' is that even if you have an EFI PC or have an EFI dongle, you need to decrypt some core parts of Mac OS X binaries to have it boot and be usable.
This requires binary patching the kernel or a special kernel extension decrypter (dsmos.kext or appledecrypt.kext).