Psystar Not Closing Up Shop 439
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by
ScuttleMonkey
from the but-i-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.
from the but-i-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.
Despite several sources reporting that post-indefinite-injunction Psystar was closing their doors for good, the company's lawyer is claiming Psystar plans on going forward with PC sales — they just won't be pre-loaded with Apple's OS X. Psystar plans on selling systems pre-loaded with "other operating systems," including Windows, as well as selling their "Rebel EFI software" that allows consumers to load OS X on generic PCs.
Aesthetics and Psystar machines (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's one thing to tie things together. It's another to tell people what they can and can't do with the things they bought. If people can buy the software without the hardware, then it stands to reason that you can put the software anywhere you want.
And seriously, even Apple supporters should be taking another look at Apple's completely perverted misinterpretation of copyright law to win their case and defend their position. Reading into RAM is an illegal copy?! And I suppose playing a DVD on unsanctioned DVD players is ALSO making an illegal copy... and playing a CD is making an illegal copy as well? Seriously, where does it end?
I bought a copy of snow leopard for $29 and I intend to build my own hackintosh. Running the code I purchased the right to use on hardware of my choosing is not their right. I don't care what the license says. They can put anything they want into a license, if it infringes on my rights, that part of the license is invalid just as many state laws do not allow many assertions that companies make routinely. Ever heard the disclaimer "void where prohibited"?
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:3, Interesting)
What Apple needs to do is set the price of OS X to be $2k. The OS costs $2k. The hardware is free. Have a blast kids.
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Really what needs to happen is the courts need to say that is it legal to A) modify a legitimately purchased OS to run on whatever hardware B) Allow licenses to restrict what hardware you run things on only in number of quantity (for example, Apple could sell you one license for OS X to be installed on one machine, if you install it on 5 you are breaking it, but if you install it on one PC, it would still be legal. and C) allow for companies to sell machines with OS X on them so long as OS X was legitimately purchased by Apple and there is a license for that one machine.
So, if I acquire a piece of open source software, I should be able to use it however I want? That would mean that any company could ignore the GPL. Apple's OS X license (that you can only run it on Apple hardware) is just as valid as the GPL, even if you would like to ignore it.
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:3, Interesting)
They do tie it to their hardware. You have to modify their base image to remove this :
$ file /System/Library/Extensions/Dont\ Steal\ Mac\ OS\ X.kext/Contents/MacOS/Dont\ Steal\ Mac\ OS\ X
/System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext/Contents/MacOS/Dont Steal Mac OS X: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext/Contents/MacOS/Dont Steal Mac OS X (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit kext bundle x86_64
/System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext/Contents/MacOS/Dont Steal Mac OS X (for architecture i386): Mach-O object i386
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:3, Interesting)
And then I can just buy a Mac, refuse the OSX EULA, request a refund and install Linux on it. Repeat ad infinitum, or at least until Apple goes broke by giving away expensive hardware.
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Monopoly or not, palm os is engaging in anti-competitive behavior by tying it's OS to it's hardware.
Monopoly or not, mercedes Benz is engaging in anti-competitive behavior by tying it's software to it's hardware.
Monopoly or not, cisco is engaging in anti-competitive behavior by tying it's firmware to it's hardware.
See how silly your argument becomes when you take out the most important aspect of anti-trust law? If it's a monopoly or not.
Businesses by their nature act anticompetitive. Put simpler, competitors act anti-competitive. Big shock.
Apple is not Microsoft. Software is not it's business, software/hardware integrated in one package is. Some people like Porsche engines but don't like their cars. Let's say porsche sells replacement engines cheap (low margin) because Porsche owners race their cars and burn them through fast. Taking advantage of this fact, a company opens up that offers to sell you Porsche engines in a cheap car like a Hyundai. Porsche should be happy but it's not because they no longer have significant competetive advantage (their engines) to lure customers but actually lose some who are lured by Porsche power in a cheaper car. Plus the engines in nonporsches also generate more service calls, support that costs $ on small margin product.
Now, to combat this, porsche, in the next gen models, installs a very proprietary and nonstandard coupling to the transmission they don't license out to anyone else.
Now, most would say, including I, that you can do with the engines you buy as you please, but can you really force them to use a standard coupling as a non-monopoly?
Re:"Their" rebel EFI (Score:5, Interesting)
"I seem to recall reading that they are actually ripping off an EFI-emulation boot loader that was open source, removing attribution, violating the license, and claiming it as their own. If this is true, they should not be given the dignity, in press articles or otherwise, of having it called "theirs"."
http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/10/psystar-steals-open-source-bootloader-and-sells-it-for-50/ [geektechnica.com]
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the license is void then that just leaves the usual "first sale" sort of stuff you get with a Book.
The notion that any creative work requires a license merely to "use" is assinine and only serves to increase the ability of corporations that are larger than many nations to fuck with individuals. It doesn't even benefit the rank and file artist.
Re: tying is not anti-competive... (Score:2, Interesting)
... my big quaking ass. So-called "tying" is very much anti-competitive, because the MOTIVE behind it is anti-competitive. Just because all the other kids are doing it and getting away with it doesn't mean it's not anti-competitive. All it means is that the DoJ only has limited resources to go after every trivial anti-competitive abuse.
Frankly, the real problem is capitalism itself, because the motives that drive capitalism are in fact the desire to thwart competition and create monopolies. If Capitalism were an NPC in a D&D campaign, it would be "chaotic neutral", because there are no inherent ethics in Capitalism at all; they have to be artificially tacked-on, with threats of force attached to make them work at all.
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the move to Intel was necessary for Apple from a logistical perspective. It's not that PowerPC isn't a bad platform; it's that no one in the business makes a PowerPC chip for consumers. PowerPC chips are more designed for workstations and servers than desktops. Apple had the same problem with IBM as it had with Motorola. The PowerPC they required had to be a custom chip in order to handle things like multi-media. Even if Apple ordered millions of chips a year, Apple would only be a small customer to either company.
These days no company wants to keep a large inventory. Apple would only order as many chips as it thought it needed; Motorola and IBM would only make so many. If Apple required more, it would have to order more and IBM and Motorola would have to re-arrange their manufacturing schedules to accommodate. The problem was Apple could never order enough. They were always short. IBM and Motorola would never make a large excess of Apple's chips because if Apple didn't buy it, they couldn't sell it to anyone else.
Thus Intel came into the picture. For Apple, ordering more chips from Intel was logistically much easier since they were no longer ordering a custom part; they were order more of a stock part that Intel makes anyway. And for Intel making extra chips in anticipation of Apple's increases wasn't a big deal. If Apple didn't buy the extra, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc would buy the extra.
So if you're Apple, do you stay on a platform that is better but you can't get enough parts or do you move to a platform which is not technically better but logistically easier? From Apple's customers' perspective, most of them didn't care which platform.
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you hit the nail on the head when you look at it from a strictly business standpoint. We've gotten into a situation where it's more important to rate a product as being better for the company than better for the consumer. I used to hope that Apple would be a way to finally kill the decrepit x86 architecture, but those hopes were dashed by profit-motivated moves. I can't really say that that's wrong, since a business has to do something to survive. I just know that somehow, in the fight, I as the consumer, sort of lost.
I used to love Apple hardware, because it was Apple hardware (in terms of the desktop market). Now there is no "Apple hardware": only everyone else's hardware with an apple etched into it and nice curves. I'm perfectly fine without their operating system, so buying their hardware these days is like going after the same ugly x86 girlfriend I want to dump, except now she has a boob job and wears nicer clothes.
I'm honestly thinking of solving my problem by purchasing a PS3 (or a few to cluster) and rolling out a custom Gentoo build for them. That way, I get my Altivec, my basic POWER architecture, and the OS I want in the end.
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:3, Interesting)
The $169 is not a full license as far as I can tell. Based on their text, the $169 is a license upgrade from Tiger. I believe Tiger was the first release of OS X that supported Intel chips. In fact their text for the $169 version begins with "Upgrade your Mac with the latest ..." It says upgrade right there. First word. It implies a continuity if nothing else.
I've implied nothing with regards to the TOS. Possession of a license and the installed state of something are completely independent of each other. A user may not have a license of a piece of software and still have it installed. Similarly, the same user may not have something installed but certainly do have a license for that same piece of software. It should be noted that having Tiger or Leopard installed is not a system requirement, but it is a determining factor in which box is the appropriate one for purchase.
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Psst. The word upgrade is not on the box art. It's in the actual text to determine which upgrade license is correct for a situation. Leopard, pay $29. Tiger, pay $169. There is no other option.
Thanks for the clarification.
I've done a bit of searching, and the actual text appears to be:
"Please note, that only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade. Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set"
First it states that: "only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade". no problem there.
Then it goes on to say that " Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set"
That doesn't preclude other people from buying the box set too. Nobody is *restricted* from buying it.
Tiger and earlier OS users are explicitly invited to buy the box set.
But it doesn't say that Leopard users can't buy the $169 box set. They can buy it if they want. They are the only ones eligible for the cheap one, but they can still buy the box set.
And similarly, people with no OS at all can buy it. It doesn't say anywhere they can't.
Re:Mod Parent Up! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a firewall where the vendor sells firmware updates and upgrades, some of which include additional features without changing the hardware. The firmware isn't licensed to run on other firewalls. Is that tying?
Re:Monopoly or not. (Score:2, Interesting)
If the copyright holder is being paid for a license of each so-called "derivative work" that is sold I'm not convinced they can complain.
Strange, I don't recall Psystar ever paying royalties for the derivative works that they created and sold. Do you?
And before you go there, no, the purchase of an original work does not also automatically constitute a royalty for any and all derivative works that could be created from the work. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as a right to make derivative works, because the first sale doctrine would exhaust said right before it could ever be used.
And finally, royalties are at the option of a copyright owner. I can't just rip off your work and when you complain, throw you a few pennies. Maybe you want to keep control over your work. Maybe you think the royalty rate should be several dollars. I, the copyright infringer, don't get to unilaterally determine what royalties I should pay you and force you to agree.