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OSx86 Shutdown Rumors Explained 600

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the needle-in-a-command-stack dept.
n.e.watson writes "The AP has run an article that addresses recent rumors on the internet about Apple Legal shutting down the OSx86 Project, with a statement from an OSx86 administrator. From the article: 'The OSx86 Project Web site stated Apple had served it with a notice on Thursday citing violations of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the site was reviewing all of its discussion forum postings as a result. The site has always aimed to adhere to copyright laws and is working with Apple to ensure no violations exist, according to a statement by the site administrator.'"
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OSx86 Shutdown Rumors Explained More

OSx86 Shutdown Rumors Explained

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  • Poems (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @08:48AM (#14754286)
    There once was a dude with a Mac
    Who's code he tried to attack
    His grin was short-lived
    When Jobs did not forgive
    And gave him a boot in the sack.

    • Re:Poems (Score:5, Funny)

      by cyberbian ( 897119 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:41AM (#14754462) Journal
      The dashing young CEO Steve,
      Has a TPM stashed up his sleeve,
      He used it to track,
      All the people that hack,
      Or that's what he'll have you believe.

    • Re:Poems (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19, 2006 @12:02PM (#14754994)
      For some reason I go this scary vision of Steve Jobs in a cowboy suit dancing and singing like crazy..

      We'll shut you down with d-m-c-a.
      We'll shut you down with d-m-c-a.

      You can get yourself clean, you can have a good deal,
      But if you don't do what we say ...

      We'll shut you down with d-m-c-a.
      We'll shut you down with d-m-c-a.

      Young man, are you listening to me?
      I said, young man, what do you want to be?
      I said, young man, you can make real my dreams.
      But you got to know this one thing!

      We'll shut you down with d-m-c-a.
      We'll shut you down with d-m-c-a.

    • Re:Poems (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mkiwi ( 585287 )
      Really, the poem is a great way for Apple to spread their culture in the hacker community. Just look at Perl poetry: although that is written in Perl, the feeling is the same.

      Rather than brute forcing everyone into accepting their Hardware on their OS, they can instead say "Go for it, but you'll not get any tech support." Apple knows it can't totally contain OS X completely, but they are succeeding in keeping OS X out of the mainstream x86 boxen.

      This is an example of how new ideas get made and how the

    • Re:Poems (Score:3, Funny)

      by AndyboyH ( 837116 )
      not mine, culled from (iirc) MacRumours but too good not to repost. If it's yours, it's an honour to repost this

      Roses are red
      Aqua is blue
      Don't pirate OSX
      Cause Apple like to sue

  • Kind of Ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sagefire.org ( 731545 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @08:49AM (#14754287) Homepage

    ...for the company that named one of it's System Beeps Sosumi (pronounced "So Sue Me") when Apple Records tried to shut them down a while back.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi [wikipedia.org]

  • Apple going overboard? LEGAL security (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sreekotay ( 955693 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @08:49AM (#14754288) Homepage
    Hmm - we do something similar at AOL in terms of the poem (yes, I know - you're SHOCKED that big companies do similar misguided goofy things :P). I had just written about it [kotay.com] on my blog [kotay.com] given all the Apple press swirl about this.

    But we (AOL) are not really trying to prevent the random developer or user from doing anything - obviously this isn't about being secure TECHNICALLY. We just wanted to prevent giant business partners and competitors and the like profiting from doing things with our software and users we didn't authorize.

    I'd imagine Apple's reasons are similar, though that doesn't really line up with this shutdown order. As I don't think anything like this has gone to court yet, it sounds like either they need to enforce their rights everywhere to keep them, or they're trying to force the precedent, or they've got some zealous/quasi-religious entitlement thing going, between their iPod protectionism, shutting down rumour sites, and now this... Ah, its ok, they're Apple - EVERYBODY loves Apple :)

    • Re:Apple going overboard? LEGAL security (Score:5, Funny)

      by P. Niss ( 635300 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:33AM (#14754438)

      Ah, its ok, they're Apple - EVERYBODY loves Apple :)

      Not nearly as much as everybody hates AOL :)

    • Re:Apple going overboard? LEGAL security (Score:5, Funny)

      by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:07AM (#14754552)
      Maybe a compilation could be assembled:

      Poems from My Childhood

      1.To Heathkit
      2.The fall of Dr. Norton
      3.Shadows of UUNET
      4.Borland, stop hurting youself
      5.Have you seen my Atari today?
      6.An Amiga I can't afford
      7.Memories of a text adventure game
      8.My talk with Hays (compatible)
      9.He's not just my penguin anymore

    • ...prevent giant business partners and competitors and the like profiting from doing things with our software and users we didn't authorize.

      The ironic part of this is how the Mac became popular. When Apple's Mac team started to market the Mac, they figured there were three programs any home user would want: word processor, spreadsheet, and database. So that's all they marketed. Sales were mediocre at best, despite what was arguably one of the world's best TV commercials [ifilm.com].

      The Mac really took off when

  • Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pstreck ( 558593 ) * on Sunday February 19, 2006 @08:51AM (#14754299)
    I don't want to steal your beautiful OS, I truly don't. I am more than willing to pay for it. I've owned Macs in the past, I loved my power book and my iMac, and i'll probably eventually by another power book. But truth be told I like building my own PCs and having the extra options that goes along with that. Don't your get that? A company that has its roots in a garage, you were born out of the hacker mentalitiy. When did you get so damn anal? Please apple, please wake up. We will pay, lots of us will. But I don't want your desktop hardware.

    • One wonders... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hummassa ( 157160 )
      How a company that is profiting exactly with "I want to buy and not just copy" (iTMS) fails to understand that.
    • And Apple doesn't want to have to support you when the OS craps out because of some crazy hardware setup you've got.

      That being said, though, why don't they throw it out there for cheap with NO support. You buy it, you install it, you figure it out, on your own. Or you pay extra for support? They still make some money on a product already developed (which is what businesses need to do in order to survive) and the do-it-yourself type gets something to play with and hopefully enjoy.

      We'll see...

      ---John Holmes..

      • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SoTuA ( 683507 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:09AM (#14754357)
        why don't they throw it out there for cheap with NO support;

        Because, even with no support, disclaimers, and all, badly running OSX on the crappiest hardware on earth is still bad publicity for Apple. For a company that's as image-driven as Apple, that spells "bad shit".
        • I think that's a miscalculation. People know what "no support" means. It wouldn't hurt Apple at all, and would probably help, with the free publicity from the "gotta build my own box" set.

          And anyway, without some hacking, Mac OS X would require an EFI logic board to boot out of the box - it wouldn't work on crappy old hardware, only new legacy-free stuff.

          And I think even Joe Sixpack knows that if you have to get a third party hack to make your OS boot, the company is not going to support you.

          • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by CyberDave ( 79582 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (redrocevad)> on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:02AM (#14754531)
            I think that's a miscalculation. People know what "no support" means. It wouldn't hurt Apple at all, and would probably help, with the free publicity from the "gotta build my own box" set.

            No, that's pretty mcuh dead on.

            We here on Slashdot know what "no support" means. And we're fine throwing OS X onto a spare partition in a box that already multiboots between XP, 2K, Gentoo, and NetBSD. And we like to brag about the challenges we had to go through to get it all to work ("I spent the afternoon recompiling my Xserver to use "march=pentium4" instead of "mcpu=pentium4" in my make.conf blah blah blah").

            But we here on Slashdot are not normal people (and a great many of our kin don't seem to understand that). What is easy and cool for us is difficult and scary for everyone else. We can deal with looking at system requirements and buying compatible hardware to use with our unsupport copy of OS X, but my parent's can't, and neither can the folks who walk into Best Buy and ask if 802.11b is compatible with 802.11g (and neither can the salesman there who answers that they don't work together).

            Joe Sixpack will hear from his friend that he can use OS X on a non-Apple PC. Even if the friend is very specifc about the details, most of those details are going to go in one of Joe's ears and out the other (much like I have no clue what most of the medical terminology means on House, M.D. or Grey's Anatomy). But they're still going to have "non-apple PC" and "OS X" stuck in their head, and then they'll try it and it won't work properly, and then they'll be one of the vocal minority of people who have problems, and post on every message board they can find that "Apple sux", etc., etc., and generally do a bad thing to Apple's image.

            Bottom line, what's great about the Mac is that it's more than just an OS, it's an entire platform that is guaranteed (well, almost guaranteed) to JUST WORK. And at this point in time, Apple is not going to do ANYTHING to jeopardize that, no matter how many people on Slashdot wish they would.

            I hope this post made some sense...running on very little sleep right now. I think I had some larger point to make, but it seems to have escaped me.

            • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

              by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @11:11AM (#14754807) Journal
              then they'll be one of the vocal minority of people who have problems, and post on every message board they can find that "Apple sux", etc., etc., and generally do a bad thing to Apple's image.

              One reason Apple has such a positive image and "brand value" is not just because of the design of their products, but because of the price/exclusivity factors. The Mac world is something one have to Buy Into, and once someone has made a commitment they are far less likely to start complaining about it.

              That's the main reason Apple products have good reputations even whey they suck. (Early slow/crashy versions of OSX were herlded; People had to fight Apple over the iBook motherboard issues and still are true blue customers, etc) People have a huge $$$ incentive to not talk down their own 'investment'.

              On top of that, consider that most computer users have *heard* of Macs, 90% of them have never sat down in front of one and used it. So you have a product with a huge word-of-mouth reputation, but only the true-blue loyalists have any hands-on experience with them.

              Now, you lower the cost of entry to $120 or $0, and the Mac is exposed to the masses. What happens? Do they all become Mac Believers? Or do they look at it soberly and come to a very different conclusion?

              When you get right down to it, what exactly is so great about the Mac? The herlded UI is flashy, but mainly just different than Windows, not really significantly better or worse. The included software is nothing all that special. A lot of people are going to (rationally) say "I tried the Mac, it's really not all that special." This attitude starts to percalate back to the loyal Mac purchsers, who start asking the same questions. (This happened in the Win95 era, when many loyal Mac buyers just changed their mind and walked.) The mystique is gone.

              • I don't buy that (Score:5, Insightful)

                by ThousandStars ( 556222 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @02:28PM (#14755733) Homepage
                Early slow/crashy versions of OSX were herlded (sic)

                Early versions of OS X were heralded because they showed such extraordinary potential. At last, a company showed an operating system simple enough for novices while retaining its complexity for masters. A company wedded the *nix experience with a slick GUI. The same machine could easily run MS Office, Adobe programs and a myriad of open source code. Decent developer tools came free in every box. Even if the beta and 10.0 releases of OS X were slow and crashed frequently, a lot of people looked at them and saw the future. That vision was even more radical because Macs in the 90's were so horrendous by comparison.

                Prior to OS X, Apple did not have a good reputation. People legitimately predicted their death. If they were mentioned on tech sites at all, it was with appropriate derision. Although some Mac users display the kind of religious zealotry you describe, your argument is still a straw man. There is no "mystique" for most of us. In the Win95 era, Apple had a crappy operating system and so did Microsoft, so a lot of new computer buyers bought Windows systems. More people still do. But Apple now offers a compelling line up. That's why they get respect on Slashdot. The company is far from saintly, as their DMCA threats show, but they are better than Microsoft and easier to use, particularly for laptops, than Linux. OS X turned the company around. It's a good operating system. That's why people use it. That's why people saw the early versions and said "wow."

                It's not coincidence that I type this from a PowerBook that originally ran 10.3.

            • We here on Slashdot know what "no support" means.

              No wait-on-hold-time for an answer that's utterly useless?

          • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by thesandtiger ( 819476 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @11:42AM (#14754922)
            I think that's a miscalculation. People know what "no support" means. It wouldn't hurt Apple at all, and would probably help, with the free publicity from the "gotta build my own box" set.

            And anyway, without some hacking, Mac OS X would require an EFI logic board to boot out of the box - it wouldn't work on crappy old hardware, only new legacy-free stuff.

            And I think even Joe Sixpack knows that if you have to get a third party hack to make your OS boot, the company is not going to support you.

            That's a pretty naive assessment, frankly.

            I used to do support for a company that sold children's educational software to home users. This software had nothing to do with the Internet, our company name bore no relation what-so-ever to any ISP that I'm aware of, and our phone number was not, as far as I know, similar to any ISP's phone number.

            Yet, for some strange reason, at least 50% of our call volume was from people who wanted us to help them connect to the Internet (or, less freqently, wanted us to give them a quick phone tutorial on how to format stuff in Word or write formulas in Excel). When we explained that we didn't have *anything* to do with the Internet or MS Office, that we wouldn't even know where to begin, and that they really should just contact their ISP for help, the response was usually along the lines of "Fuck you! I'll tell everyone I know to stay away from your shitty company!"

            Expecting Joseph Pack, IV to be a reasonable person when it comes to this stuff is not a wise idea. He'll try to install the software, it won't work, he'll beat his head against the wall for hours and hours, and then tell everyone he knows that Apple is shitty. How do I know this? Because I can point out that the exact same thing happens with Linux... How many people have you met who think Linux is a steaming pile of shit because whatever distro they tried didn't install easily? How many people have you met who think Linux is a company with a shitty "free" product?

            Apple releasing OSX for anything other than their very specific hardware selection would be a catastrophic mistake - it isn't designed to work with "just anything" and I don't care how many disclaimers one puts on the box, people won't read them, they'll try to get it to work on stuff that specifically isn't supported, and then they'll bitch and moan to all and sundry that Apple sucks.
        • "badly running OSX on the crappiest hardware on earth"

          Frankly, I dont think Apple cares about people running OSX on crap hardware at all.

          What Apple is worried about is people successfully running OSX on better and cheaper hardware without any problems. What Apple is worried about is getting a repeat of the old Mac clone days with associated collapse of profit margins.

          The image works to keep the current margin up for as long as people see the products as distinct and irreplaceable, but if consumers are sudde

    • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by brainnolo ( 688900 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:01AM (#14754328) Homepage
      Unfortunately, selling platforms is Apple's main activity, they do not sell hardware and/or software. The Mac is a platform composed of Mac OS X and hardware tailored to make it run without glitches, this is what they offer, the fact you don't like it does not authorize you to use a component of their platforms with different hardware. Buying a copy of the OS is not enough even (because they do not make huge profits out of it, they mostly cover R&D costs), yet is probably is enough to shut that little voice saying "don't steal" up :)
      • How come Apple has no problem with you buying a Mac and running Linux on it, but seems to have a problem with people buying Mac OSX and running it on other hardware? I'm sure the number of people who will actually run Mac OSX on a Dell machine are about the same number of people who would run Linux on a Mac. In the end, it really only helps them to get a few more bucks, from people who will buy the OS just to tinker on it. I'm sure there's a lot of web development shops who would love to run OSX just to t
    • Kind of funny when there's many of us who want their hardware, but don't want their OS :)

    • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by m50d ( 797211 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:07AM (#14754348) Homepage Journal
      When did you get so damn anal?

      That one's easy. When they stopped having Woz.

    • Please apple, please wake up. We will pay, lots of us will. But I don't want your desktop hardware.

      Maybe.. I have two ancient apples and my son has a new apple notebook. His rocks. And I'll probably buy one of those mac mini's this year.

      I would *like to* build a PC based OS X machine. I don't have any real problem with Apple hardware, but I would like to have a CHOICE when I do need to add/change some hardware. I wouldn't mind at all buy the OS and maybe some of the hardware too, if the price is COMPET
      • Istalling a HD into a G5 tower does not void the Apple Warranty, since Apple itself states that Memory, PCI cards, and Hard drives are user servicable. Many places do have outragous prices on hardware upgrades, but your son was pretty dumb to go along with Apple for this.

    • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Yahweh Doesn't Exist ( 906833 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:17AM (#14754382)
      >But I don't want your desktop hardware.

      And Apple doesn't want your custom.

      Why do so many people think they have a right to dictate the terms of other people's businesses?

      • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PetiePooo ( 606423 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:25AM (#14754403)
        Why do so many people think they have a right to dictate the terms of other people's businesses?

        That's easy. Those people have the checkbooks!

        Seriously, why do so many businesses think they can cram whatever garbage they want down our throats? I'm not saying Macs are garbage; I personally like them better than Windows boxen. However, many businesses, MS and Apple included, assume they know what's best for me. I disagree. And, since they don't have my checkbook, I get to take it elsewhere.
        • >And, since they don't have my checkbook, I get to take it elsewhere.

          Then do so. Apple doesn't care about that, Apple is worried about the people who say "you're not selling me exactly what I want so you leave me no choice but to steal/copyright infinge your products."

          • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:4, Informative)

            by asdfghjklqwertyuiop ( 649296 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:01AM (#14754530)

            "you're not selling me exactly what I want so you leave me no choice but to steal/copyright infinge your products."


            Nobody was violating Apple's copyright. Apple is (ab)using the DMCA to shut these guys down.

      • Why do so many people think they have a right to dictate the terms of other people's businesses? He does. He's the customer.
      • Huh? How is his use of custom hardware to run software that he buys dictating their business? If I buy a hairdryer and I use it to dry paint, am I dictating their business? What if I buy Excel and use the install CD as a frisbee? What gives?

        I can deal with businesses having ridiculous ideas about how the world should work: that they should control things after they've sold them. Businesses are always ridiculous. As long as they stay out of my house they can say and think whatever they want. But when

    • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CynicTheHedgehog ( 261139 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:24AM (#14754398) Homepage
      Haven't we been over this? Apple sells a computing experience. The only way that they can guarantee a stable, secure, and performant environment is to assert control over their hardware. They can't write drivers for everything, and if they opened up a driver API for third party vendors the result would be chaos, and then everyone would complain about instability and speed issues for the next ten years until all of the major third party vendors got their drivers sorted out. This is the same reason you can't buy XBox firmware for a Sony Playstation. Like videogame consoles, Apple computers are platforms consisting of hand-picked, thoroughly-tested sets hardware, firmware, and software. That is one of the primary factors in their reliability, and it isn't going to change any time soon.

      The experience is more than the software, and therefore costs more. If it is truly worth it to you, you will buy a mac. If not, enjoy the alternatives. Regardless, theft is theft and I believe Apple is perfectly within their rights, not only as it relates directly to profits but also with respect to their reputation. OS X is not going to run as well on random x86 chipsets and peripherals, and the resulting quirky behavior will be damaging to their image.
      • The driver API is open to everyone. You can go to develop.apple.com and read all you want about it. They don't include the startup routines, or how to write the bootup KEXT's, but you can do anything you would like post-boot.

    • Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:52AM (#14754500)
      Companies grow up, they move away from their roots and strain the friendships they fostered. Apple extended to many people years of hacking fun, fostering an environment of computer understanding and comraderie. In return, that community extended it's friendship and remained vehementally loyal. A good friend is hard to find, hard to lose, and hard to forget.

      But Apple hasn't been true to it's garage hacking roots for many, many years. Some of their devices are specifically built to be hack unfriendly. Their audience isn't the same makeup and composition of the old "old-timers", and when you tell a new mac addict about building your own paddles / joystick for the II+, they sort of look at you and say "That's neat, I have a Sidewinder joystick". They're buying the mac for good reasons; security, ease of maintenance, (more) consistent UI design, etc. But, in the end, they are more likele to be consumers of the technology, and only possibly consumers of the few hacks that get created for those platforms.

      As a company, Apple has decided to cater to that crowd, and finiancially they may not have a choice. Their computers (and other devices) are coming pre-packaged in slick boxes with all of the image gimmicks that are usually reserved for high end perfumes. It's becoming even more about image than before. The image market will always have hordes of people who will be happy with knock-offs and pirated copies of the Mac OS, as it feeds into the "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality.

      Much of the Macintosh's product image is in the software, and Apple has decided that CPU and hardware details aren't vital to that formula. Losing control of the software means losing control of the Mac market.

      Things may change; the pendulum may swing back. These sites may go online again. People can find a happy medium. But human nature is not dismissable, and I'm sure a few people are thinking along the lines of this quote:

      "I think that if your friends don't like that you think a little different than they do, then maybe you shouldn't want them as friends. And, you should consider the loss of friendship their loss, not yours." --Chelsey Collinsdale

      I don't think Apple deserves to be demonized over this, but I hope they don't play their hand too strongly. Perhaps it is best not to befriend a company, as they "are always constant, except in (their) affections." -- Oscar Wilde (taken out of context, of course!)

  • Mmm...tastes like insurrection... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Making it Easy to Be "Guilty until Proven Innocent" for Over 8 Years.

  • Bad link (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Cisco Kid ( 31490 ) * on Sunday February 19, 2006 @08:58AM (#14754316)
    I see the /. editors have a new whore, I guess they got tired of the NYT and now hang with the W post.

    For the cheap seats this time:

    IF YOU CAN'T POST AN OPEN, PUBLIC LINK TO THE STORY, THEN DON'T POST IT AT ALL
    • As for NYT, just use this [blogspace.com]. Most likely, it will make a link that doesn't require to log in.
    • And he makes the most valid point. WTF is the point of putting a story up without publically accessible links so we can digest the whole thing? My English teacher would be appalled at this restricted source, and would be doubly so if this were an actual paper about Apple. Way to follow your basic high-school education, editors.
    • um, why?

      so you have to register. big friggin' deal. if it bothers you, plug in bogus data like most of the rest of the world. there's well-known technical work-arounds, like BugMeNot, as well. personally, i'm glad to have people posting links to sources like the NYT and Washington Post, rather than some random blog, where quality of writing is important (hey, that's not to say they uniformly achieve it, but it's a goal there, at least). what annoys me is the stupid disclaimer that every NYT link gets after

    • Re:Bad link (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Reality Master 101 ( 179095 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .101retsaMytilaeR.> on Sunday February 19, 2006 @12:15PM (#14755048) Homepage Journal
      IF YOU CAN'T POST AN OPEN, PUBLIC LINK TO THE STORY, THEN DON'T POST IT AT ALL

      Screw you. Who the fuck are you to decide that I should only view links that don't require a subscription? If you don't like it, don't look at the story. I'll decide for myself whether I want to view it, thank you.

  • Disgusting. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @08:59AM (#14754321) Homepage
    just days after they featured links to information on how to hack the software and run it on non-Apple PCs[emphasis mine]
    Links?

    It's immoral when large companies like Microsft, Sony & now Apple try trying to limit our right to do whatever the hell we like with legally purchased goods.

    But to issue a takedown over a link is just disgusting. Apple needs to take a good look at the ethics of other compapnies that do this sort of thing and ask itself - is this really where I want to go?

  • SLAPP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by maynard ( 3337 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:04AM (#14754340) Journal
    OK, after reading TFA, this strikes me as more a SLAPP [wikipedia.org] (Strategic lawsuit against public participation) lawsuit by Apple than any government intervention. It appears that Apple served their ISP with notice of a possible DMCA violation, and so the ISP (or the site administrators) shut the site down in order to verify the claims made by Apple. No judge has filed an order, however.

    So: are links to remote sites which convey possibly nonviolent criminal information worth squelching in the public interest? And should a private entity have the inherent right to enforce their interest without a court order (as appears to be the case here)? Because that's what misuse of SLAPP is all about.

    • Maybe you should actually really read the article. Which fucking lawsuit?

      • Re:SLAPP (Score:4, Interesting)

        by maynard ( 3337 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:37AM (#14754450) Journal
        Oh, I read it. From TFA:

        "The OSx86 Project Web site stated Apple had served it with a notice on Thursday citing violations of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the site was reviewing all of its discussion forum postings as a result."

        They were served with a notice, meaning threat of legal action. While a lawsuit may or may not have been filed, certainly Apple's lawyers are threatening legal action. If you read the article on SLAPP, you'll see that since the goal is to squelch public participation, expensive court proceedings are a final option. Often SLAPP suits fail in court for the corporate entity, because most hinge on specious legal grounds. Spend your opponent into oblivion and make specious legal claims in the press... that's the weapon of choice for corporate lawyers.

  • outsource it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by scenestar ( 828656 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:25AM (#14754402) Homepage Journal
    Everytime i wonder when i see a valuable project taken down for DMCA violations i wonder: "why dont they just continue the job overseas where legislation is more reasonable?"

  • Give it a rest (Score:4, Insightful)

    by admo ( 955700 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:49AM (#14754490)

    Good god, these "I deserve to run OS X any way I like" arguments are tiresome. Go do something to make OSS better if you want to tinker. Or hack OS X to run on whatever you want, and then keep it to your damn self and enjoy it! Just for god's sake don't bring up that Apple I motherboards were made in a garage or that Woz futzed around with long distance calls more than 30 years ago - 30 years ago! - as reasons Apple should "chill out" about people using their software in ways they don't like.

    • Yawn.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:30AM (#14754632)
      Good god, these "I deserve to run OS X any way I like" arguments are tiresome. Go do something to make OSS better if you want to tinker. Or hack OS X to run on whatever you want, and then keep it to your damn self and enjoy it! Just for god's sake don't bring up that Apple I motherboards were made in a garage or that Woz futzed around with long distance calls more than 30 years ago - 30 years ago! - as reasons Apple should "chill out" about people using their software in ways they don't like.

      I have had this discussion with half a dozen people who are looking forward to being able to use OS.X on their low-end noname PC boxes and laptops with all the stability that it would run on a Mac. Running OS.X on regular PC systems will be possilbe, but it is also going to degenerate into a war between the Apple team working on the locking scheme and whatever crackers there are trying to make OS.X work on their PC boxes. Even if the crackers succeed keeping the OS running most of the time, OS.X on non Apple hardware will never be all that stable, I know that from experience having seen cracked OS.X installations in action (and this on a high end PC laptop, not some cheap-ass noname crapware). Furthermore even if you can run OS.X on your cheapo PC system you will not be able to patch it without worrying about your computer not booting because Apple has shipped a new counter patch to the latest hack with it's newest patch cluster. Basically you would be better off using Linux, yes you will still have to spend a few hours recompiling your kernel and tweaking drivers to get your WIFI to work and you will always have minor issues but at least you won't have to worry about your computer not booting after installing a patch cluster. I would trust my data to Linux long before I would entrust it to a hacked OS.X version running on a Dell laptop.

    • Re:Give it a rest (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .nokrog.> on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:59AM (#14754753)
      Ok...this is wrong and I will tell you why....

      In the near future, I can go into any store that carries Mac OS X and purchase the Intel version of it. What I do with it after that is my business. Oh sure, I may be "violating" the license by trying to run it on Non-Apple hardware, however am I going to be calling Apple's support line? NO! Am I going to be complaining that it doesn't work on non-apple hardware? Well, yeah I will, but not to Apple. The thing is Apple is the one who CHOSE to use Intel. Intel is a far more open platform then the PowerPC platform is. Most PowerPC companies have thier own deal preventing other OS's running on thier hardware and the different Linux projects have worked arounf this. IBM has ROS on the pSeries and Apple has OpenFirmware. Intel simply doesn't have this kind of limitation. Apple is just one of the first companies to take advantage of EFI and other companies will follow. Why? Apple does not OWN EFI and EFI is destined to replace BIOS. As soon as EFI becomes more popular, it's going to be even EASIER to run Mac OSX on any hardware and even easier to get Windows to run on Apple hardware.

      Apple's fighting a battle they cannot win. Just because this site is shutdown does not mean there will not be another to pop up and replace it.

      Yes we deserve to run Mac OS X on anything we want....we just won't get support from Apple and a large majority of the people who want to do this probably don't need support from them anyway. Besides, this is a way to transition to Apple hardware in the first place. I think there's a large contingent of people who would LOVE to try it, but want to be sure that they can do what they want to do on it before spending a bunch of dollars on new hardware. After they get it running on a regular Intel box and they find out this stuff is great thier next PC may just come from Apple. This project isn't costing Apple money.

      I think that one of the most important things that any project that replaces it needs to make clear is that you must purchase a license from Apple. Right now, this requires you to buy a MacBook Pro or a iMac. In the future, when 10.5 is out, you can just buy that. That way the only thing Apple loses in the near term(after 10.5 is out) is a hardware sale. The project should not condone piracy. In the long term, Apple stands to make that money back on future hardware and software purchases.
      • Oh sure, I may be "violating" the license by trying to run it on Non-Apple hardware, however am I going to be calling Apple's support line? NO!

        Awesome! Then, I guess you'd have no concerns with me completely ignoring the GPL as I see fit if I have no intention of ever using OSS "support?"

        It's funny that a group who causes it to rain at the mere hint of a license violation that works against its own political agenda is able to essentially laugh the same thing off when it works in the group's favour. The

    • Re:Give it a rest (Score:3, Informative)

      by lubricated ( 49106 )
      >> Good god, these "I deserve to run OS X any way I like" arguments are tiresome.

      How about the I can put whatever link on my page I want thread. Apple force a site to take down LINKS!!!

  • why not... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wormnet.org ( 955561 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @09:51AM (#14754495) Homepage
    Roses are red,
    Violets are blue.
    If you hack my code,
    I'm going to kill you!

  • Is this really illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thisislee ( 908426 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:04AM (#14754539)
    Funny. I thought talking about crimes wasn't illegal in this country. There have been what I think is legal information about how to do things that are completely illegal for as long as I can remember. While you should never act on this information, it is only information.

    While The Anarchist Cookbook is legally available in the United States, it is unlawful in many other countries. The information contained in the book includes instructions that, if followed, may be against the law (see felony for more details). Anarchist Cookbook [wikipedia.org]

  • Mark my words.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .nokrog.> on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:05AM (#14754542)
    Apple, this is not something you can stop. Its NOT illegal to do what these folks are doing. The law allows for reverse engineering. IBM LOST this battle and you will too. What is this battle I speak of? Remember way back when all PC's were made by IBM?? IBM tried to sue the pants off of Compaq and others for reverse engineering BIOS. Granted, this is not the same time period or the same thing but case law seems to go in our hands in my humble opinion.

    From Wikipedia:

    Columbia copied the IBM PC and produced the first 'compatible' (i.e., more or less compatible to the IBM PC standard) PC in 1982. Compaq Computer Corp. produced its first IBM PC compatible a few months later in 1982 -- the Compaq Portable. The Compaq was not only the first "sewing machine-sized" portable PC but, even more important, was the first essentially 100% PC-compatible computer. The company could not directly copy the BIOS as a result of the court decision in Apple v. Franklin, but it could reverse-engineer the IBM BIOS and then write its own BIOS using clean room design.

    Franklin and Columbia did the wrong thing but Compaq did a white room reverse-engineering of the BIOS. This is all the OSx86 project is doing too. Hello EFF??? You need to defend these guys.

    In less then 10 years, there will be no Mac's or Apple will just give up preventing anyone from installing thier OS on other machines....can't Apple see that there are lot of people who ALREADY HAVE x86 machines that are perfectly capable of running thier OS but they can't or rather won't justify spending 3 grand on a new Mac. These same people would probably even consider a Mac when they do have the money just because they WANT to run your OS. Helloooo? Apple what are you thinkin?

    • Re:Mark my words.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot.stango@org> on Sunday February 19, 2006 @11:02AM (#14754769) Homepage Journal
      Franklin and Columbia did the wrong thing but Compaq did a white room reverse-engineering of the BIOS. This is all the OSx86 project is doing too.

      No they aren't, you idiot. The IBM PC BIOS was examined and its specs were written up by a team of engineers. Those specs were then given to a second team of engineers who were very carefully selected for their lack of exposure to the IBM BIOS ("virgins", in industry parlance), so IBM would be unable to claim that their work was tainted by that. The second team was them tasked with developing a BIOS that behaved just like the genuine IBM BIOS according to the specifications the first team divined from it, but without ever being in the same room as the genuine article.

      THAT is how legally-defensible reverse-engineering works, or at least did back then. The guys cracking OS X so it runs on generic PCs are just patching Apple's code to fool/circumvent the checks it does to make sure it's running on genuine Apple hardware. That's not even close to legitimate reverse-engineering. I don't even think they'll be able to hide behind the "interoperability" provisions of the DMCA that allow some limited reverse-engineering.

      Oh, by the way, a Mac can be bought for $500 that will use your existing display and (USB) keyboard-- it always cracks me up when you guys try to prop up your anti-Apple arguments by bitching about the price of their top-of-the-line hardware while conveniently ignoring their low-end machines.

      ~Philly

  • Apple can do no wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by voice of unreason ( 231784 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:14AM (#14754574)
    Not to flamebait, but it always astonishes me how Apple manages to get away with this stuff. Whenever any other company does this sort of thing, they get a lot of grief. When Apple does it, people get mad, but Apple somehow manages to keep an entirely undeserved reputation as nice people. Apple may make a nifty OS and a nice mp3 player, but they do all the bad stuff that Microsoft and company likes to do, but somehow people still think they're heros. Someday people are going to catch on that having less market share doesn't mean you're more ethical.

  • Build My Own (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CSHARP123 ( 904951 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @10:17AM (#14754587)
    I dont buy computers, I build my own, I've been doing this for the past 7 to 8 years. With all the restrictions that apple puts in place for OSX I will never be able to try it. There could be lots of geeks who do this, may be they are minority which do not make any business sense for apple to sell OSX sans their hardware. Really, folks if a company do not want you to use their software on any of the custom machines you build why even BUY their software. This is nothing but ego clash between Apple and hackers. I think apple has every right to shut these people down. If you dont like their hardware DONT FUCKING BUY THEIR SOFTWARE EITHER

  • Hear me, Slashdot! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WhiteWolf666 ( 145211 ) <[sherwin] [at] [amiran.us]> on Sunday February 19, 2006 @11:15AM (#14754824) Homepage Journal
    Want to see _real_ Apple fanbois?

    Look at the jacknuts in this thread supporting Apple's use of the DMCA. These assholes really are approving of use of the DMCA.

    Back in the day, Compaq built an reverse-engineered BIOS in order to run IBM-DOS on Compaq systems. They won the legal fight, and it opened up a new era in computing.

    In this day and age, the DMCA would prevent that from ever occuring, because you would never be allowed to crack the TPM. And these Apple fanbois are actually supporting them.

    I'm an Apple fan. I have a powerbook, two mac minis, and I was thinking about buying a powermac G5. But I sure as hell don't support any usage of the DMCA.

    • Re:Hear me, Slashdot! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kwerle ( 39371 ) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Sunday February 19, 2006 @03:31PM (#14756113) Homepage Journal
      Back in the day, Compaq built an reverse-engineered BIOS in order to run IBM-DOS on Compaq systems. They won the legal fight, and it opened up a new era in computing.

      http://www.jmusheneaux.com/01.htm#1 [jmusheneaux.com]

      They also took the legal approach: 2 team cleanroom engineering. Legal then, and probably legal today. While I have not looked at the OSX hack sites, I doubt that's what they're doing. They're probably taking the OS, disasembling it, patching it, and releasing the patches.

      The correct approach would be to start from scratch and write an OS that could load and execute OSX programs (which would be similar to the WINE project, I imagine), or load the whole OS without modifying it.

  • Information wants to be free (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19, 2006 @11:16AM (#14754826)
    I've seen quite a few posts on this but here are few links in particular that I found to be good. I will finish up by saying that Apple cannot win this battle. The x86 market is far too large for people not to tinker.

    1. OSX 10.4.4 Works on AMD and SSE2 CPUs [hishamrana.com] Check out the "related posts" entries for more info.
    2. After OSX86 Project recieved it's DMCA shut down notice, people are moving discussion to the OSX86 China Forums [osx86china.com]
    3. For immediate questions, IRC Channel [irc] is availabe.
    4. To search old posts go to the 360 Online Forums [360insider.net]
    5. 10.4.4 restore disc has already been released on bittorrent [thepiratebay.org]

  • Topic is complete FUD .. it was only the FORUMS ! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Macka ( 9388 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @11:52AM (#14754962)

    Have any of the 100's of people replying to this actually bothered to visit www.osx86project.org and look for themselves to find out what's been going on? Doesn't bloody seem like it. The Washington Post article was hopelessly wrong and inflammatory, and n.e.watson is a jerk for not checking it out either before making himself look like a complete ass!

    At no time during all of this was the OSX86 Project shutdown, nor was there any chance it was going to. It was THE FORUM only. And only for as long as it took the moderators long enough to find and remove the links to "patches" that violated the DMCA and got Apple's attention.

    I guess some people don't want to know the truth. Too busy lathering at the mouth over how some big bad corporation has stomped over the little guy. When in this case it didn't.

    • >> Too busy lathering at the mouth over how some big bad corporation has stomped over the little guy. When in this case it didn't.

      They forced a site to shutdown it's forums because of a LINK!!!!
      When did a link become illegal? If this isn't a corporation stomping on a little guy, I don't know what is.

  • technical battle over (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jay2003 ( 668095 ) on Sunday February 19, 2006 @02:18PM (#14755667)
    Apple clearly expects to lose the technical battle to keep OS X from running on non-Apple hardware. Calling out the lawyers means they are accepting defeat, at least for the moment on the locking the software front. In a way, this is good news for those who want to run OS X on non-Apple hardware. The information will migrate to being hosted in country without the absurd DMCA.

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