The OP asked if it was ok, and the answer is a basic and plain "no." No one is going into deep philosophical discussions, or marshaling their legal services
Except that the moral undertones
were brought in:
If you want Apple to adopt a Microsoft-like activation process, complete with regular checks, then buy one copy and share it with all your mates. Apple currently do trust their user base, and it'll be a sad day when their consumer software comes with serial numbers.
Do the right thing.
[Emphasis mine]
You state that the answer is very simple, but I don't think that it is. There are ways to go about using a Family Pack in a manner that is NOT detrimental to Apple, and there are ways to go about using a Family Pack in a manner that IS detrimental to Apple.
The way that is NOT detrimental to Apple is: 5 computers need leopard, but because those 5 computers are in such close proximity that only 1 disc is needed (limiting share-ability, portability, resell-ability), Apple offers the incentive to
"do the right thing" by paying a little extra to stay "legit" in what would otherwise be a piratically enticing situation. No one is holding a gun to Apple's head,
they decided to make this offer to the consumer. In the household case, an inconvenience is created because there exists only one physical Leopard disc. Generally, because of the close proximity, that inconvenience becomes a non-issue. But if someone leaves the household and moves across the country, but finds the needs to re-install, she is out of luck. It's now in her interest to own her own, individual license to the software so that she is entitled to physical possession of the installation disc.
Use of a family pack in a manner that WOULD BE detrimental to Apple would be buying one Family Pack, splitting the total cost between 5+ different people, burning 5+ copies of the disc, and essentially giving everyone the freedom that they would have had if they had each bought an individual license, but at a fraction of the cost.
In the former case, does it really matter if people are within the same physical household versus being in the same, say, 2 mile radius? Only 1 person retains possession of the physical disc, and the other 4 are slightly inconvenienced. It's therefore a cost/benefit analysis on their part -- risk not having access to the installation disc for any amount of time, but paying a smaller fraction of the total purchase price, or having the security of their own installation disc at the cost of a higher up-front payment.
In the latter case, the piratical element is clear. In the former, I think the boundary imposition is a bit arbitrary. To show why this is arbitrary, I think if someone had come in here and said "I have 2 iMacs, one in my primary home and one 500 miles away... can I just buy a family pack?" NO ONE would have pointed their moralistic/legalistic finger at the rule that says the disc can only be used in one household. If someone had come to this forum and said that his brother lives in a trailer in the back yard, which technically is not part of the household, and questioned whether he should be allowed to make use of the family pack, only a few (the biggest d-bags in this forum) would have pointed to the rule.
Which takes me to my point: I think it's a bit silly for people to cite the black letter rule with such moralistic fervor. It strikes me as a VERY LIKELY case of denial and hypocrisy. And given that this is an open discussion forum, I think we're entirely free to debate the underlying reasons for the perhaps arbitrary restrictions imposed by Apple in their EULA. We don't see this kind of false pretension in the iPhone forums where people are quite happy to hack away at Apple's various policies regarding carrier and application restrictions. Why should we do it here? The OP deserved a fairer answer than he got. He didn't present a case of blatant piratical intent. It was, I think, a question which has reasonable, but differing answers.
With this kind of thing there are three possible questions: What is technically possible, what is legal, and what is moral.
You and Justice Scalia would be great friends.
But rightly or wrongly (another moral question!), 95% of the rest of the judicial system would disagree (although perhaps only privately) that there is a distinction between a moral and a legal question.
This is ESPECIALLY TRUE in a one-way bargaining situation where the software licensee has absolutely no leverage to bargain the terms of the EULA.
