What Is the Issue in the Psystar Case?
Linked by Nescio on Mon 9th Mar 2009 08:05 UTC
Apple 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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alcibiades
Member since:
2005-10-12

Its not really about Apple or Psystar. The particular case is, but the fundamental issue is not. The issue comes up, as Thom says, in clear form in the question: should MS, having decided to sell retail copies of Office, be able to stop you installing them under Wine?

As to making money from Apple's efforts, objections to this are pure nonsense. Every Mac retailer, every Mac software developer does this. It is true that Jobs always had problems with this, always felt that there was something not quite right about Mac developers. But this was pure nuttery on his part.

Apple is not obliged to sell OSX at all, or for any particular price, or adopt any particular method of distribution, or release developer SDKs. It makes a commercial choice on what to do in all these respects, so do others in the surrounding parts of the industry. If it doesn't like the opportunities it is creating for them, it can always change how it sells. As an example, it does not sell Filemaker for Linux. No-one thinks it has to.

The issue is solely this: having decided to sell OSX at retail, for reasons best known to itself, what limits can it place, and what limits should we want it to be able to place, on what we install it on?

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