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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Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:2005-08-18
I haven't purcased a license. Does it say on the box that I do? Does the clerk inform me of this? Does the box say that where I can find the contract terms?
Not counting the Dutch, who are apparently morons, most countries has limitations on how much a company can deceive the customer.
I'd argue that in most places it does, especially when it comes to post-sale limitations. In no other industry can a company impose restrictions on what you can do with a product after you've purchased it. Sure, they can void your warranty but that's all.
T
Member since:2007-05-12
You never purchase software. Ever. You purchase a license to use said software. I mean, I don't even know what you think you're purchasing. It's a virtual product. There is nothing tangible (except for a license and sometimes a distribution medium) that you can own.
The burden of proof is on you.
Member since:2005-07-06
I haven't purcased a license. Does it say on the box that I do? Does the clerk inform me of this? Does the box say that where I can find the contract terms? "
Yes, the outside of the box does. You really should go to a store and actually look at the boxes of Apple's software, you seem to be completely ignorant on the topic.
Member since:2005-10-12
The EULA is not a contract, per se. It is a document describing the terms under which you are given the license you've purchased.
This is evidently not true in the US, and it is probably not true in other Anglo Saxon jurisdictions. In the case of Softman, the defendant had bought a copy of Adobe software. He then broke up the package and resold it one bit at a time. There was no claim that he had violated copyright by duplicating it unlawfully. He had simply bought a CD with packages A and B on it, then sold package A to one person and package B to another, which was explicitly forbidden in the EULA.
Adobe sued on the grounds that the EULA forbade such behaviour. The EULA was said to be binding for exactly the reasons given above, that the copies were transferred as licenses not sales of copies, so the EULA simply recorded the conditions of license. The court ruled against Adobe on the grounds that Softman had only bought a copy of the software, but not installed it. Not having installed it, Softman had not entered into the contract whose terms are given in the EULA, and was thus not bound by it. He had however bought his copy, and thus had the right to resell it as a bundle or in detail.
There was no breach of the EULA because Softman had not clicked through and entered into that contract.
So in the US the situation is interestingly different from what Thom describes for Holland. There is no doubt that until you click through, you have not entered into the EULA contract and are not bound by it. This is why Softman won.
Member since:2005-07-06
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softman_v._Adobe
"selling as individual units the software titles that were purchased from Adobe as a single boxed ***"Collection" ***. The individual titles had their own CDs."
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5628
"So does this mean Linux users can break up a hardware/software bundle, keep the hardware to run Linux on and sell the software? Yes, says attorney Wendy Seltzer, Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. "It makes a strong case that the licenses purporting to restrict resale in this manner are not valid licenses--so the transactions are in fact sales, and the buyers are not subject to the "license" conditions. It helped that Softman hadn't even had to click a clickwrap", Seltzer said in an e-mail interview."
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#1 Psystar install the OS and Agree to the term of EULA.
#2 they are not breaking an Apple system/bundle as they buy the OS *upgrade* only and not the hardware
#3 Apple is not suing Psystar over it's EULA.
Charges copyright, trademark infringement, violation of OS X software license ( << not the same as EULA )
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleB...
"In an order signed on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup gave Psystar the go-ahead to amend its lawsuit against Apple. According to Alsup, Psystar may change that countersuit, which originally accused Apple of breaking antitrust laws, to instead ague that Apple has stretched copyright laws by tying the Mac operating system to its hardware."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleB...
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2007-05-12
The EULA is not a contract, per se. It is a document describing the terms under which you are given the license you've purchased. The license always comes with these terms (well unless a court deems some of them illegal). In most jurisdictions (for example, as it seems according to Thom, in the Netherlands) the licenser needs to make the terms generally available and doesn't have to get your agreement prior to purchase. If the law where you live differs then you may have a point. In most places it doesn't though.