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Author breaking licensing agreement by charging for downloading Memtest OS X 4.22?

ravenvii

ravenvii

macrumors 604
Original poster
Mar 17, 2004
7,588
494
Melenkurion Skyweir
I have 4.21, and want the latest version, which is 4.22. But when I went to the site to download, I was taken to a page saying I have to pay $1.39 to download it.

You can see for yourself at http://www.memtestosx.org/

I'm surprised. Isn't this against the licensing agreement? Memtest is open source software, and the author took it and modified it for OS X, and is now charging people to download it. Doesn't the GPL require that the software be freely available for download?
 
The GNU GPL does allow for the commercial distribution of GPL software. So it is likely that they are within their rights to charge for the OS X version. That they are charging so little means they are likely only charging for the cost of redistributing it (hosting the files and paying for the bandwidth to download it to end-users) which is also allowed under the GNU GPL.
 
There's another more obvious company that's done it...:rolleyes:

Apple took the open source Unix OS, modified it and then charged for it. But it's all legal though.
 
pjrobertson said:
There's another more obvious company that's done it...:rolleyes:

...
Click to expand...
Just to clear things up. The UNIX basis of MacOS X is called Darwin. Apple charges for the unique software built on top of Darwin that makes MacOS X much more than just a generic UNIX. Darwin is and always has been a free download.
 
ravenvii said:
I have 4.21, and want the latest version, which is 4.22. But when I went to the site to download, I was taken to a page saying I have to pay $1.39 to download it.

You can see for yourself at http://www.memtestosx.org/

I'm surprised. Isn't this against the licensing agreement? Memtest is open source software, and the author took it and modified it for OS X, and is now charging people to download it. Doesn't the GPL require that the software be freely available for download?
Click to expand...

Not at all. There are three different items: First, anybody can charge any amount they like for software that is licensed under the GPL. I can sell the gcc compiler to you for a million dollars, completely legal even though I didn't write a single line of code for it. Second, if the author made an offer to supply the source code, they can charge for the cost of providing the source code to you. Third, the item which has to be free: It is completely illegal to charge for the GPL license. Once the author has given you the application, you get the GPL license at no charge.
 
dirt farmer said:
Have you tried Rember? It's a nice front-end GUI for memtest. And while memtest is extremely cheap, Rember is free!
Click to expand...

Has anyone tested to compare whether Rember is a thorough and reliable test compared to paying for Memtest OS X 4.22?? I've been having issues a lot lately with Safari and Photoshop CS3 crashing on me. In Safari it usually happens when I'm like closing an open tab or something that's running like a flash player or something on the page. In Photoshop it pretty much crashes every single time I go to exit the application. Just wondering if I maybe have memory problems or just need to reformat and reinstall or if it's just a common issue. I have OCZ DDR2-800 modules so I had to flash them with a ROM sent to me by OCZ to get them working on my MBP. So that's a bigger reason why I question the modules.
 
Author breaking licensing agreement by charging for downloading Memtest OS X 4.22?

burningrave101 said:
Has anyone tested to compare whether Rember is a thorough and reliable test compared to paying for Memtest OS X 4.22?? I've been having issues a lot lately with Safari and Photoshop CS3 crashing on me. In Safari it usually happens when I'm like closing an open tab or something that's running like a flash player or something on the page. In Photoshop it pretty much crashes every single time I go to exit the application. Just wondering if I maybe have memory problems or just need to reformat and reinstall or if it's just a common issue. I have OCZ DDR2-800 modules so I had to flash them with a ROM sent to me by OCZ to get them working on my MBP. So that's a bigger reason why I question the modules.
Click to expand...

I can't give you a technical answer to your question, but here's what I know.

Rember v0.3.4b contains memtest v4.2 dated 10/21/06. According to the release notes, here's what's changed in the last two updates:
=====================================
Version 4.22 - 5/24/2008

SUPPORTED OS VERSIONS
MacOS X 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger), and 10.5 (Leopard). Support for MacOS X 10.2 (Jaguar) has been dropped due to the lack of an appropriate SDK in Xcode 3.0.

NEW FEATURES

None.

BUG FIXES

KERN_SECURELVL returns 0 in multiuser mode under Leopard so this selector is no longer valid for determining whether we're in single user mode. For OS versions 10.5 and later, the sysctlbyname function is used with parameter "kern.singleuser" to determine the operating mode. For OS versions earlier than 10.5, the old method using sysctl and KERN_SECURELVL is retained because the kern.singleuser parameter is not available.

ENHANCEMENTS

None.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Version 4.21 - 8/25/2007

NEW FEATURES

A new command line switch quick enables slightly faster run times with minimal loss of accuracy. There have been many requests for a faster way to test large amounts of installed ram so the quick switch is a first attempt at decreasing the total run time. This feature is currently under development and the initial improvement isn't as great as I had hoped for. Future releases will shorten run times significantly.

BUG FIXES

None.

ENHANCEMENTS

When the user requests that a log file be written to disk, memtest now reports the full unix path to the log file in the header messages. This removes the ambiguity as to what directory the log file is being written.
 
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