While the Apple v. Psystar case is currently on hold until the hearing regarding the motions for a summary judgement takes place (November 12) the Psystar v. Apple case (still with me?) is only just beginning. Psystar has amended its original complaint in this second lawsuit, asking the judge to order Apple to cease calling Psystar’s business “illegal”, claiming it hurts the clone maker financially.
There are two cases running in parallel between Apple and Psystar. The first one, Apple v. Psystar, is the one we reported on a whole lot already; it’s filed in California, and is currently in the summary judgement phase. This means that both parties have presented what they consider to be the undisputed facts, and then ask the judge to rule in either one’s favour to end the case before it officially goes to trial. A hearing will take place on these motions November 12, and the official trial date is set for January 11, 2010.
The second case was filed by Psystar in Florida, and concerns Snow Leopard – Apple successfully kept Snow Leopard out of the first lawsuit. As a result, the lawsuit above might end in a puff of smoke, since Psystar has already agreed to an injunction against selling Leopard anyway, because it doesn’t sell Leopard any more. Apple tried to have the two cases enjoined, but Judge Alsup denied this request.
In the amended complaint in this second lawsuit (sadly, the documents for this case require PACER access. If you have access, and you are allowed to share these documents [please double-check!], I’d love to get a copy), Psystar asks the court to stop Apple from saying that it is illegal for Psystar to buy Snow Leopard on the open market and then resell it.
“A declaration by this Court of the legal rights of Apple and Psystar with respect to Psystar computers running Mac OS X Snow Leopard would clarify, to put it bluntly, the legality of Psystar’s business — and would remove the substantial negative effect on Psystar’s business of continued uncertainty and legal wrangling between Apple and Psystar,” the amended complaint reads.
“[Apple’s] violations of the federal antitrust acts have damaged and will damage Psystar in its business and property because they deny Psystar business that otherwise would go to Psystar by creating doubt about the legality of Psystar computers running Mac OS X Snow Leopard,” Psystar’s lawyers state, “The items of damage to Psystar include damage to Psystar’s business reputation and to the reputation of its products and sales lost that could have been made absent Apple’s attempts to restrict Mac OS X Snow Leopard to Macintoshes.”
Psystar asks the court to slap an injunction on Apple that would make it impossible for the Cupertino giant to “[represent] that Psystar’s making and selling such computers is other than perfectly legal.”
The amended complaint also stated that Psystar’s Rebel EFI package is a perfectly legitimate use of features Apple has purposefully included in Mac OS X. On top of that, the clone maker finally plays the open source card.
Psystar’s position with respect to Mac OS X Snow Leopard is analogous to that of a person developing a software application to run on top of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Just as Microsoft writes Word to run with Mac OS X and Google writes its Web browser Chrome to run with Mac OS X, Psystar writes its software to run with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. In fact, the part of Mac OS X Snow Leopard that Psystar interacts with is within the open-source portion of Mac OS X and makes use of features of Mac OS X Snow Leopard designed to allow software developers to extend Mac OS X Snow Leopard to work with different hardware.
What Psystar is referring to here is of course the open source portion of Mac OS X, Darwin, which is perfectly fine to hack. Running custom kernels on Mac OS X is perfectly normal – it’s just that many people who install Mac OS X on non-Apple labelled computers use this to create custom kernels better suited for their hardware.
Psystar is also referring to Mac OS X drivers, known as kexts, which are used to extend the hardware support for Mac OS X. This is of course also a perfectly valid use of Mac OS X’s capabilities – imagine not being allowed to write drivers for Mac OS X!
There’s no reply yet from Apple, so we’ll have to wait what Apple has to say about this one. The open source and kext arguments are strong ones indeed, and it’s a mystery to me as to why the clone maker didn’t make them more prominent in the other lawsuit. Well, thanks to Apple purposefully and successfully keeping Snow Leopard out of the first case, Psystar’s new lawyers (who only joined later on during the first case) get the chance to do it properly this time around.
I love how OSnews has become PSnews (PsyStar News)
This is about our right to run the OS we want on the hardware we want. It’s importance cannot be understated. I don’t want to be in a future where you can be jailed just for daring to look under-the-hood.
Personally, I think Psystar is a sleazy company and always has been, compared to other cloners; but I’m glad that at least _somebody_ has taken things this far in court.
I too have never liked Psystar as a company at all, they just happen to be the ones who started a very important fight. I personally don’t have any interest towards Hackintoshes as I don’t like OSX at all, but I do however have a lot of interest towards copyright laws and EULAs.
As copyright laws and EULAs and similar ones do touch every single person using computers it’s quite obvious that any related news will be reported here.
No it’s not, it’s about Psystar’s right to sell said computer. There are all types of resell restrictions that are not limited to computers. For instance a friend of mine built his own airplane, legal to fly it himself, but he could not resell it.
Can you purchase a gun and then just sell it to whoever you want? Alcohol? Tobacco? Prescription medicine? When I buy a six pack of beer, I can not resell it to a minor. Sounds like a post sale restriction to me, and I didn’t even click “Accept”!
The important difference that you fail to mention is that the restrictions you mentioned are governed by law, not by contracts.
It is also the legality of the SLA to begin with. When Psystars engineers install the OS on their hardware, they choose to accept the terms of the SLA. Since they are breaking that contract, they are violating the terms of the said contract.
That being said, it is a civil matter. What someone said about it being illegal to look under the bonnet doesn’t understand the concept at hand. This is not a criminal case. Even if the courts find in favour of Apple, it won’t create the case law to make it criminal to look at how things work. It will just legitimise EULA/SLA contracts. It does not matter if they bought all the licences that they install, since Apple is making money on it. Apple is a hardware company that happens to make software for their hardware. It is saying you are starting to make your own cell phone because you think the prices of Blackberrys is outrageous. And since you can legally download the firmware off blackberrys website, and you decide to install it onto your own hardware is also in violation of the agreement from RIM’s website.
What psystar is doing is sleazy, and I like to know where they are getting the money to finance their legal escapades.
What Apple is doing is sleazy,* and I [sic] like to know where they are getting the money to finance their legal escapades.
Seeing how tight Apple is with Big Content these days, maybe the RIAA and MPAA are secretly behind their lawsuit against Psystar. After all, if Apple wins, that paves the way for CDs or DVDs that come with EULAs stating you can’t re-sell them. Say bye-bye to used music or movie stores, probably the fondest dream of both the RIAA and the MPAA. Not that Apple would mind either, since it would just mean more ITMS revenue.
*Seriously, WTF is with Phil Schiller – did they actively try to find someone with even less charisma and likability than Steve Ballmer?
More accurately, it would be like Sony BMG selling you an MP3 and then telling you that you can only play/use it on Sony brand hardware (like a Walkman).
ATRAC?
Eh… what?
http://www.google.com
Those are horrible comparisons.
OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!111
And I thought that Apple’s “jailbroken iPhones will crash cell towers” idiocy was the height of sensationalist dishonesty. I see now that I was mistaken.
The examples you gave there are there to protect the costumer instead the company. The EULA is there to protect the company instead of the costumer. They are tow fundamentally different things.
If Compaq hadn’t done the same thing in the 80s to IBM, we wouldn’t have the PC ecosystem we have now. Compaq reverse engineered the BIOS, and IBM took them to court. Compaq, and everyone else won.
This case is no different, and even though the motives of Pystar are suspect, if they win, everybody wins.
if they win apple stops selling mac os x on dvds
(or can a court order apple to sell copies of mac os x to psystar?)
Your equating software to home built aircraft, firearms and controlled substances. You don’t think your maybe reaching a little?
Software is more like the CD of your favorite band. Any old CD reader can play the music off that disk. Now suddenly Virgin Records includes a slip of paper inside the case. You go, you buy the disk. You get home and pull the plastic off only to see:
“Thank you for purchasing our product. By breaking the plastic seal, you agree to only play this music on Sony branded music players and also agree that content on this will not be converted to other formats.”
It’s an EULA and is restrictive in that it tries to remove writes already granted by copyright and fair use. No one would accept the first clause either. The more likely response is “I baught the music disk and I’ll play it on whatever CD reader I want and I’m going to copy the songs over to my mp3 player.”
It’s a synthetic limitation. The only thing stopping it from running on non-Apple purchased hardware is the EULA. Get an EFI motherboard and your golden. yet, we accept that osX is somehow different from any other copyright content. It’s software; it’s magical and shit! – no it’s not; it’s just software and there’s no reason a legally purchased copy can’t be installed on non-Apple hardware outside of apple asking you not too.
Agree. If Apple didn’t want people to install this software on anything other than Apple hardware, they never should have provided the software separate from the hardware. This is an important case. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that Psystar is doing here, but I find it difficult to oppose them, either, just based on the fact that Apple is so obnoxious and dictatorial with the ecosystem.
Synthetic laws are placed on all kinds of products for all kinds of reasons. We have many laws that support the creator of a product over imitators or resalers.
For example Western socities ban counterfit goods as they dilute the value of another company’s brand. It takes little effort to apply a Guess patch to a cheap pair of Wal-mart jeans. It’s a synthetic limit that allows Guess to have quality control over their brand.
At the same time Wal-mart always has the option of creating their own brand just as Psystar has the option of creating their own OS. Intellectual property laws not only exist to protect exisiting companies but also to encourage companies entering a market to not take shortcuts.
Counterfit of a brand clearly infringes on trademark law. EULA removed rights given by copyright law. It is also applied after purchase; “oh, by the way, now that you bought our product, you can only use it like this…”
This is also not a third party duplicating another companies product. A thirdparty is legally buying the retail product and providing it as an option. They are not slapping a CK label on knockoff geans but instead providing there own geans with the same zippers that CK uses and out of the inventory CK chooses to sell separate from the pants. (everybody needs replacement zippers from time to time)
Psystar may not be squarely in the right. They could have spent that money contributing the less consumer hostile software. However, the fight they’ve started has consequences far beyond Apple OEM vs a reseller.
Soooo, a computer is now somehow a dangerous item and a sale between 2 people needs to be regulated as such? Sorry, weak analogy.
I’m really hoping Apple loses this battle. I’ve never thought this was an “illegal” vs. “legal” battle in the first place. I’m glad Psystar is hammering that point with the court. This case is essentially all about a *contract*, the EULA. Psystar, or any other company installing OS X at a user’s request, is not the “end user”, thus not breaking any EULA, which is supposed to be a *contract* between Apple and the END USER. If an end user, the customer, breaks an EULA, it’s a breach of contract, which as I understand it, is simply a civil dispute between two parties, and not implicitly “illegal”.
Apple made the investment into OSX, not Psystar. It’s their product and they can sell it a manner that benefits them.
Going against Apple is foolish in the long term. Apple’s profit margins depend on selling a complete package which includes the OS and the hardware. There’s a dozen ways they could make life difficult for Psystar. It isn’t as if selling the OS at retail is a major part of their business model.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Psystar was created as a private investment trap. The people at the top have to know how many ways that Apple can legally screw them.
And Psystar can resell it in a manner that befits them. Basic economic principle that’s older than god. Why should Apple have a status aparte?
Why should anyone other than Apple and its stockholders care about its profit margins? Why should I? Why should Psystar? Should the law be disregarded to safeguard Apple’s profit margins? Would you allow the law to be disregarded to protect Microsoft’s profit margins too?
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple is actually acting as a puppet for the RIAA/MPAA here. Those two organisations would benefit massively from having EULAs clearly labelled as okay. Imagine CDs with EULAs in them, which stated no personal copies, no reselling, only allowed to be played in authorised players (i.e., not recorders)… It’s the RIAA/MPAA’s wet dream. Insane, you say? Well, what other company is Steve Jobs the big boss of?
Bingo.
Of course, the above is complete nonsense – but it’s no more nonsensical than those silly claims about Psystar you EULA supporters make.
Edited 2009-11-03 18:57 UTC
They can resell someone’s product as long as they are not breaking the laws. Beyond the EULA there are also resale laws. I’m not sure why you are so concerned with this case when Apple is holding all the cards. Even if Psystar finds a way to legally resell OSX Apple can nuke their business.
I said that I wouldn’t be surprised if Psystar is a private investment trap. It isn’t a claim, it’s speculation and it isn’t at all nonsensical.
A private investment trap works like this:
1. Get people to invest in your business
2. Go belly up over extenuating circumstances
3. Keep the profits that you sheltered
The whole thing can be done legally as long as you can show that you didn’t intend to defraud investors. Unethical yes but in a case like Psystar it can be impossible to prove that they had no intention of creating a sustainable business.
Of course the people in charge of Psystar may not be doing this but based on the fact that they have been shady about their physical address and gpl code I would guess that the people in charge never intended for the company to be around long-term. They may not be trying to defraud investors but I believe the business has been built around short-term profits.
Of course Apple can – but they don’t want to for two reasons.
1) There’s little they can do to hinder Psystar without making themselves look supremely dickish, which would clash with the whole “think different” image.
2) It would cost money and effort, and those costs would probably be ongoing.
Instead, Apple seems to think they can make the problem go away forever by just throwing money and lawyers at it.
Then Apple shouldn’t sell the software separately from the hardware. Problem solved.
Of course they could pull it from retail shelves but what problem would be solved by all this?
Apple customers will be inconvenienced while Psystar will go out of business.
That’s why I support Apple in this case. I see the end result being customers inconvenienced by a fly-by-night company.
Some of you might see this as “sticking it to the man” but Apple has billions in the bank and could shrug off selling the OS at retail. Or they could clamp down and only provide updates for supported hardware. If this happened all the people that bought Psystar boxes would be stuck with frozen systems. They would be hurt by the whole thing far more than Apple.
In the end I see this as a futile attempt at demanding a product that a company doesn’t have to provide.
Edited 2009-11-03 22:03 UTC
My point is simple. Apple can’t have it both ways. They can’t sell their OS at retail as a separate product and then turn around and complain that people are using it as a separate product (untied to the first).
And, for the record, “sticking it to man” just for the sake of screwing over “the man” is never a valid defense in my book. Have a legitimate reason and grow up. Childish games are for children and all that…
Edited 2009-11-04 01:21 UTC
And among those Psystar customers, who do you think most of their anger would be directed at? Answering that questions also goes a large towards answering the question of “so why doesn’t Apple do that?”
They’re at least smart enough to know they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face.
.. and Apple has chosen to sell osX in a retail box for anyone to purchase. They still get the retail cost of the sold unit set at what they’ve chosen to sell it at.
Moron,*YOU DON’T* have the right to run the OS we want on the hardware *YOU* want unless it’s a GPL’d OS like Linux or something similar where you are granted permission to do so.
The sooner parasites like yourself are rounded up and tossed into the prison cell where you and those like belong the better off the *REAL* FreeSoftware/OpenSource moment will be.
You alt 2600 warezing assholes did enough damage by getting involved with the DeCSS trial.
Do us all a favor and f–k off now….
Moron,*YOU DON’T* have the right to run the OS we want on the hardware *YOU* want unless it’s a GPL’d OS like Linux or something similar where you are granted permission to do so.
Where do you base your claims? Do you say EULAs are always valid and can and should be enforceable? If so then it’d be interesting to hear some arguments as to why you think so.
Besides, do you understand the implications of such? If EULAs were indeed found to be legally binding then do expect to start seeing EULAs in DVDs, CDs, electronic books and so on.
You alt 2600 warezing assholes did enough damage by getting involved with the DeCSS trial.
How do you know that they use illegal copies? I’ve seen several people mentioning that they’ve actually bought a retail copy of OSX and used that.
Do us all a favor and f–k off now….
And you are somehow better than all others just simply because you can throw out a whole bunch of baseless insults at people and don’t back up a single of your claim with any kind of an argument?
Are you for real? If you think the GPL has certain virtues for freedom, then please kindly explain them, but don’t talk to anybody on this site like how you have, especially staff.
Good God, man. What is WRONG with you? This is a discussion. There’s no need for name-calling. Given the diverse set of people here on OSNews, you can’t expect everyone to agree with you. But at least show a modicum of respect.
… except for the “tiny itsy bitsy” detail that what you claimed is not what Pysstar is going to court for.
People should have the right to run whatever they want in the computers they own, that is probably a no-brainer argument. However, that is not what Pysstar is going to court over. They are simply trying to re-sell other people’s product without the authorization of the manufacturer.
Twooo very different issues IMHO. Trying to piggyback Pysstar as a champion of freedom is simply hubris. Especially, when Pysstar is going against the interests of those in the OSX86 community to begin with.
Edited 2009-11-03 20:43 UTC
… except for the “tiny itsy bitsy” fact that is not what Pysstar is going to court to.
I don’t quite care what their motivations are, I don’t like them anyway. But the point is, EULAs and copyright law do come up very important in the Psystar vs Apple case and either outcome will have very big repercussions regarding consumer rights.
People should have the right to run whatever they want in the computers they own, that is probably a no-brainer argument.
A lot of people disagree with that notion, including Apple.
Trying to piggyback Pysstar as a champion of freedom is simply hubris.
You’re assuming things and not reading enough. I am not trying to pose Psystar as any kind of a champion for Free Software or consumer rights. It just happens that this case does touch those subjects very broadly, that’s why it is so important.
For all I care Psystar should win this case but have to close their doors for some other unrelated reason.
Apple may disagree with it, but there is nothing they can do about it. If an *individual* makes a hackintosh for their own use, that would be legal to do under copyright. That is why Apple has not gone after the hpbbyists.
This case has nothing to do with consumer rights. Psystar by definition is not a consumer. Copyright law declares a consumer as someone who purchases goods and services without the intent to resell. Psystar has every intention of reselling, which makes all the difference in the world.
To reiterate, as a *consumer* I am allowed by US Copyright law to make a hackintosh if I so desire. What I cannot do is build it with the intention of selling it according to US copyright law. Now, if Psystar took the order, got the money from the customer, and then purchased the copy of OS X and installed as a consumers agent, the original lawsuit from Apple would not be where it is and Psystar would be in the clear.
No, the only reason that Apple hasn’t gone after individual hobbyists is because they’ve seen all the wonderful success the RIAA has had from suing grannies and teenagers. And by “success” I mean “complete and utter PR suicide.”
Funny, I would think that an END USER License Agreement would be more applicable to you (the END USER) than it would be to a reseller like Psystar.
The RIAA went after people for uploading the music, no matter who did it. I don’t agree with it but the law again was on their side. You should check the law out..you can legally download all the music you want. It is the sharing that is against the law. So basically, you are not allowed to upload anything. If you note those cases of Granny’s and Teens, they were all uploading. Note that I am not saying I agree with it..just how the law reads that deals with it.
Funny, I would think that an END USER License Agreement would be more applicable to you (the END USER) than it would be to a reseller like Psystar. [/q]
It would be. That is why I am betting that part of the EULA loses in this battle. Copyright law is on the side of consumers that make hackintoshes, as under fair use I can do whatever I want to with the software I purchased like using the media as a coaster, or installing the software on my dog’s collar. Psystar, as I noted, is not considered a consumer and has different copyright rules to follow, namely that someone not a consumer is not allowed to make the backup copies or however you want to call it. That is the key difference in this case, and the reason why Apple may have a shot at winning it.
I hope they don’t. All I am pointing out is what the existing copyright law states, not on whether a EULA is valid or not. I will leave the EULA’s to the courts to decide. So far in the US, some parts of some EULA’s have been deemed valid, while others have been found not valid.
Actually, in many cases, they just sued the owner of the computer without making any effort to determine if the computer is used by other people and if one of them could have done the actual uploading. And that’s when they weren’t trying to sue dead people, or hundreds of John Does en masse.
If so, there’s an extraordinarily easy work-around: Psystar could simply hold off installing OS X on a PC until after it’s been purchased, which would let them argue that they’re just acting on behalf of the customer. If it’s legal for support techs to install software for customers, then there should be no problem with Psystar installing OS X on for their customers.
Or if that doesn’t fly, they could just ship the hardware and the OS X DVD together, along with a printout of some basic installation instructions. The OS X install is so dumbed-down that a gerbil could probably manage it.
Very true.
That is correct. In actuality, that is how the hackintosh maker in California is doing it. I forget the name.
Except that there are already laws on the books that allow someone to resell a product they purchased, except when it is otherwise controlled (like arms, drugs, and the like). Software sales are not controlled. This is no different than me buying a CD and reselling it to someone else (as far as resale goes), which is perfectly legal for me to do under current law (without getting permission from the place of purchase or the manufacturer).
The real question the case will decide is whether it is legal for Pystar to install OSX prior to resale. In other words, by installing it first are they attempting to sell two copies (original disks and installed copy) while only paying for one (the original disks)?. As others have stated endlessly, violating an EULA or SLA is not a legal issue.
If Pystar loses then the decision could effectively limit (or possibly eliminate) companies that purchase and resell (or even donate) used computers, because they could be forced to remove or re-license any installed software. Unintended consequence? Maybe.
Edited 2009-11-03 20:57 UTC
Oh that is certainly not unintended. Apple fanatics often claim that Microsoft is behind Psystar, but if there is one company that would benefit from an Apple win – it’s Redmond.
Thom,
I think it’s one of the larger US hardware OEMs, specifically Dell. I think Dell because Michael Dell has his own private investment bank (www.msdcapital.com), and the financial facilities (and connections) to effectively prop up a smaller company to take on Apple this way. There are other companies out there that could pull this off, but the actions Psystar is taking suggest that someone who really knows what they are doing with finance is pulling the strings here.
What I think will come of this is that Apple is going to end up adopting some very draconian methods to stop this from happening again. It will waste a lot of time and money, but it will happen.
Apple really should have stayed off of x86 if they wanted to avoid this. For the same reason people try to port Linux to every gadget that has a CPU, people will try to get OSX to install somewhere Apple doesn’t want it to… simply for the challenge of it.
apple doesn’t care about people installing mac os x on pcs
People were porting OS X to different hardware when it was on PPC. Remember MacOnLinux for PPC Linux?
I had 10.3.9 running on Debian on a PPC Linux box.
Also, do you remember PearPC? Same premise.
Although, this shows you how far you can take it:
http://www.lowendmac.info/w/images/0/08/68kPanther.pdf
Can somebody please point out where Apple went after the Hackintosh community before Psystar came into being? Seriously… Why does everybody ignore this? Psystar isn’t championing a cause… They’ve stolen from everybody just to make a quick buck in their own wallets.
The amusing point has been made on Ars something like this. Apple wants the power to sell its software freely and then specify what hardware a buyer may install on. If Apple has that power, so does everyone else.
So there will be nothing to stop anyone selling software which can be installed on Macs, perhaps under Wine, or in a VM, but simply specifying in the EULA that it may be installed in any machine as long as that machine is not a Mac. Or that, if it is server software, it is unlawful to allow Macs to connect to it.
So, is that what you all really want? Do you really want to hand the world and his brother that sort of power over your favorite platform?
Edited 2009-11-04 08:41 UTC
Excelent point of view. If Apple has the right to do it, then everybody has the right to do it.
In that case, I even have the right to implement a web site and to state explicitly in an EULA that is not permited to see that website from Mac Os X operating system.
How will Apple behave if Google, Youtube, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter expressly forbid Mac Os X and Safari users to access those sites? It can be a matter of EULA.
Except that has been going on for years with IE only sites.
No, that is quite different. That is just sites that do not as a technical matter display properly in Firefox (for instance).
What you are all voting for here is the ability of a site to display perfectly well on a Mac running Safari, or a piece of software to run perfectly well on a Mac in Wine, but the author, in a fit of spite, specifies in the EULA that no-one may use this from a Mac. And it then becomes a copyright violation to do so. Or at the very least, you can be sued for doing it or encouraging people to do it or enabling them to do it.
What you’re trying to do, in order to allow Apple to discriminate against some makers of X86 hardware, is to allow the whole world to discriminate against Apple’s own hardware. It cuts both ways. Now, do you really want that?
Might it not be a lot safer, as well as socially better, rather than try to obtain that power for all vendors of software, to take a different tack. Just stop selling OSX in a form which is able to be installed on other people’s hardware?
I guess you don’t want to hear about news in this case?
OSNews reporting on the case, does not translate into the site taking a position on the outcome.
I think you need to take a class in critical thinking.
Edited 2009-11-03 12:42 UTC
Given that the topic is about PsyStar, and that the common theme of these Apple v. PsyStar topics are along the lines of “here’s a new development. what will PsyStar do next?”, that it’s a bit more apropos.
I don’t think anyone really thinks OSNews has a dog in this show, or at least its not visible to me.
Nor did the OP state that it was.
I think you need to take a class in reading comprehension.
Heh, I thought you corrected a spelling error for me.
Boy was I wrong.
I don’t love it. I don’t know why Thom thinks we care about his Psystar fetish.
Because it is one of the more important tech cases to come down the pike in awhile. It is very similar to the Compaq situation where they reverse engineered the IBM x86 bios and created the monster that is Microsoft and dealt a severe blow to IBM. Most people who know anything about that time period would say that was one of the most important developments of the tech world.
…that they play the opensource card on the very week they may have been found to have illegally used opensource code
So far I haven’t seen any concrete proof. I may be wrong. Might just have to pay them a visit when I go home to FL.
If you venture through OSX86 site you’ll see the collective bricks that are being sh*tted all over with regards to all the stuff that has been found to have “made it” to the rebel EFI rip off. Jesus, they even included useless and outdated kexts on the package, probably because Pysstar does not know better.
Edited 2009-11-03 20:47 UTC
I have absolutely no issues with “Hackintoshing”. People should have the right to do what they want to the software on their computer if it doesn’t break the law. It’s how this industry got started, especially because people like Peter Norton and Richard Stallman poked around and did interesting things. It’s why systems like Linux, Amiga, DOS/Windows, and the Mac succeeded, because people were able to modify their OS via extensions and add-ons.
What I have an issue with is Psystar taking the work of those people and selling it without attribution, like with Rebel EFI.
I have no issues whatsoever with the Hackintosh process, because I think it leads to a better overall OS and ecosystem for the community. If you take away the ability of people to modify and play around with software, you really take away innovation.
Plus, when there’s a will, there’s a way. It can and will be hacked. It was done when MacOS was on PPC (MacOnLinux), and will be done again.
I have a big issue with parasitic companies like Psystar that take the works of others and re-sell them without attribution to people like Netkas.
If they want to have more support from the community, they should start cutting checks to Netkas and others. Until then, they’re only doing one thing, which is causing Apple to react by adding more code to Mac OS X in an attempt to stop the inevitable.
well that is the fundamental problem with ‘free’ software. Once it is written, anyone can use it without giving back.
Oh the plight of developers who do not understand cash flow and human nature.
The best way is simply to not care. The GPL _cares_ too much about what is happening to the code away from the originator.
BSD, CC doesn’t. I don’t care what other people are doing with my code, I’m not paranoid. I know that that I can never dictate what other people should do, I can only educate and help nudge people in that direction. I don’t have time to be hunting people down and nagging them, personally.
So? You don’t care about your code (there must be thousands upon thousands of lines of your code out there I assume, right?) good for you. Other people do, so Pysstar can go pound sand and come up with their own code if they don’t want to comply with the wishes of people who have stated clearly the fact they don’t want their code to be commercially distributed by people who had diddly squat to do with it.
If Apple is unhappy with the way Psystar uses their code, then maybe they should… oh, I dunno… STOP SELLING IT TO THEM?!?!?
A radical, outside-the-box idea, I know – but by God, it’s crazy enough that it just might work!
Apple’s just acting like a spoiled little kid who gives a toy away, then demands it back 5 minutes later.
Edited 2009-11-04 17:00 UTC
The license in question (used by boot-132) isn’t the GPL, its the APSL (Apple Public Source License), which kinda makes your anti-GPL rant look a little silly, but hey, don’t mind me, use whatever license you want, and I won’t even bother to ‘nudge’ you if you use one that I don’t.
They should not call a business illegal until proven in court. I learned that on Dragnet.
lol. Best comment yet.
OK I am GOING WAAAY OFF TOPIC // So I did not fact check any numbers
@Merck Glaxxo and Large Pharma
In this world of AIDS and SARS and the evil flu of this season why do we care if psystar falls into a swamp in florida. There are far worse issues of intellectual property. I know that it costs a few pennies at most 5 – 10 dollars per pill to help reduce the pain and suffering and do some real good in someone’s life but the monthly cost of this medicine is hundreds of times higher than it needs to be. (ask your parents or grandparents)
This year those companies (Merck) decided to not license flu vaccine medicine in India now in a bad case thousands may die, maybe tens of thousands more. They have not even provided enough for our country or license it to ensure that there is enough to go around.
Large Pharma is the Real Reason why US Insurance costs so F*cking much. We act like insurance companies are the problem but (Like in old school X-Files) Follow the Money. I am assuming that we are all relatively intelligent here so tell someone
I have said my peace on this because if PSYstar wins then Apple will have little choice but to go with a Microsoft Business model. With Serial numbers and Genuine Advantage type crap.
There is nothing that stops me from running OS X on whatever HW I choose to. I am just a little too real to try to call that a business model – heck I might even make some shareware bucks.
if PSYstar wins then Apple will have little choice but to go with a Microsoft Business model. With Serial numbers and Genuine Advantage type crap.
They’ll have three choices.
Choice 1: stop selling OSX at retail separately from a Mac and with no questions asked.
Choice 2: Go with product activation.
Choice 3: Stop trying to dictate what hardware people use once they have bought a retail copy.
Which they do, who cares? Most of us do not much care what happens to Apple, what we care about is what it does to us and to society if Apple gets the powers it is claiming, because then everyone else gets those powers too.