"Invention" is nothing.
Patenting and implementation is everything. What belongs to whom legally.
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Psystar Files for Bankruptcy
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"Invention" is nothing.
Patenting and implementation is everything. What belongs to whom legally.
What makes you think that Psystar ran out of money for legal representation as a result of this case? There is no way that they would have been able to fund this case with corporate profits. The lawyers were most likely working for payment based on winning the case or a settlement. Or they were financed by third parties.
Uhh, the FSF does not actually code or otherwise produce any software.
Apple is protecting their multitouch patent so what, Elan thinks that have a case against Apple and if they have any valid patents the courts will sort it out. If you don't protect you patents you get everyone using your R&D.
You're not making sense. It's a patent dispute. Apple owns multitouch patents and it's defending them. Nothing wrong here.
It would be a lot, lot worse for Microsoft. Basically, Psystar's argument is that license agreements cannot be enforced. For Apple, this would be bad; for Microsoft, it would be fatal. Every business would ask its employees to buy home licenses for all the Microsoft products and bring them to work. Windows Home Editions would be hacked to run on high end servers. Any company that sells student or home licences for their software would lose out.
Can a fanboy tell me how the consumer wins in this case? Reading half of these comments make me sick... like people on here live to please Apple. For god's sake, who gives a sh*t if another company is trying to give us some lower cost mac clones? As much as you want to believe it, i dont think anyone here can make a case of how little teenie psystar made even a microscopic dent in apple's stock price. You don't have to feel bad for apple... they only need to look at the balance of their bank accounts to to turn their frowns upside-down.
The consumer wins because apple does not have to spend millions of dollars going after a company that is breaking the law and stealing their product and mis-using it, which means in turn they don't have to pass that cost on to the consumer.
It is like asking when the police arrest the shop lifter how does the consumer win...
Pretty darn sure you can't sue yourself...
Clearly never heard of a little company called COKE ZERO!
So what you're saying is that representation was no longer available because it could no longer be paid for: directly, indirectly or retroactively. This comes down to exactly the same thing: losing a case not because blind Lady Justice judged against you but because you can't afford lawyers.
Losing because you are weak rather than because your case is weak is what happens in a society of men, not a society of laws.
Apple does not "actually code", its employees do, with copyright being assigned to Apple. Apple provides resources to enable the coordination of developers of its software. The FSF does not "actually code", but its adherents do, with copyright being assigned to the FSF. The FSF provides resources to enable the coordination of developers of its software.
If you're bothered that the FSF doesn't pay developers of gcc a wage, feel free to send money directly to developers or ask them which charity they'd like money to go to. The principle and its application here are that, if people should be paid for work from which you benefit, then you need to pay those who are responsible for the creation and maintenance of gcc. Do not use the excuse that "the FSF don't ask for money", because they do - they just don't use the law to force it out of you.
Morally or legally?*LTD* said:
Sorry, no. The average business has better things to do than maintain a hacked up version of Windows XP Home Edition to run on a high end server, just as it has better things to do than take the risk of Psystar over Apple. Perhaps this was useful with NT 3.51, and remotely worthwhile with NT 4.gnasher729 said:
It could end up being a whole lot worse than just that. One of the main reasons that OSX has a limited market share is the hefty price tag that Apple puts on the hardware required to run it. If Psystar were to win the argument that the EULA'a were unenforcable the other companies would be allowed to do exactly what Psystar did. You'd see Dell, Toshiba, HP, Compaq, etc, offering an OSX option on the machines they sell. Apple's marketshare would skyrocket, at the cost of Windows licences.
Microsoft actually has a distinct advantage in the marketplace so long as OSX remains "unbreakably" tied to Apple hardware. They would be the last people in the world to try and sever that cord.
Now think about it. You say "Apple assembles computer just like everyone else, with parts everyone else can buy too". So you just made it very, very clear that in your own opinion Apple has absolutely no monopoly in their hardware. On the other hand, there is the software. I don't know if you followed the Psystar court case, but Psystar claimed that Apple had a monopoly in MacOS X. Guess what: A company cannot have a monopoly on its own product. You have to find a relevant market, and the market here would not be "MacOS X", it would be "operating systems". And guess what: Microsoft has 90% of that market. Apple has 10%. No monopoly here.
When you buy a box with MacOS X, you know what the license says: You are allowed to install _one_ copy of MacOS X on _one_ Apple labeled computer. If you want to read the license, type "macos x licensing" into Google. The judge in the Psystar case said exactly that: Apple is free to sell MacOS X with this license; you can take it or leave it, and if you take it, you have to conform to the license terms. Copying MacOS X without permission by the license (and installing is copying) is copyright infringement.
100% correct - the only people to gain out of breaking the EULA would be hardware makers namely Dell (since they have publicly stated that they would like to have OS X as an option).
Until at least Apple could no longer afford to further develop OSX (at its current pricing) or until Apple is forced to jack up its pricing. OSX is only useful as long as Apple can put resources into it. If EULAS were to go bye-bye, both MS and Apple would loose big - they couldn't afford to develop software on a large scale. When Apple can no longer justify its R&D costs (which it makes up right now with hardware), they will most likely cancel it since they can't make a profit.
Of course they could jack up the price, but the market can only tolerate that for so long.
WOAH! That is a huge, and inaccurate claim there.
FSF does not get copyright assigned to it without the author's permission. The FSF will definitely help you find representation if you have a case, and sponsors/hosts various GNU projects (as the two are tightly knit groups for the most part), but they are NOT copyright owners in the way Apple is. (EDIT: For some of the larger projects, like GCC, this may be different due to the complexity of the project, but most projects don't operate this way)
Copyright for code written under the GPL and similar licenses remains under the control of the author, unless otherwise given over to someone else. I don't think even the FSF would try to assert copyright on code added to projects they sponsor. That goes against their own tenants.
Force is the wrong word to use here. You spend money on a product in exchange for the product. Law is there to protect the right of trade, and copyright law is there to help encourage creative works to be created, and help those individuals make a living off things that enrich society as a whole, if they choose to take advantage of it.
There are problems with the current copyright/patent system, yes... but that is another discussion.
As well as a price increase would come software activation (like MS) and that's the last thing you would want.
QUESTION:
Why are people still talking about the End-User-License-Agreement and Psystar in the same sentence...
Psystar is NOT an End-User...
Fun times!
(eagerly awaits the Mac Tablet...)
Why are people still talking about the End-User-License-Agreement and Psystar in the same sentence...
Psystar is NOT an End-User...
Fun times!
(eagerly awaits the Mac Tablet...)
Its actually really simple. Apple has a duty to its stockholders to be as profitable as it can be. Very little of their revenue is derived from sales of OSX itself, rather, the profit Apple makes is derived from its hardware sales and OSX is a driving force for a consumer to purchase that hardware. This hardware profit in turn allows Apple to sell OSX upgrades at a low cost to the comsumer and upgrade and innovate OSX in order to sell more hardware in the future, etc.
If Apple had lost its case, it would not have lead to a widespread corruption of the OS as many here claim; Apple wouldn't let one of their flagship products become tarnished like that. Rather, Apple would have done one of three things:
1) Released a non upgrade, retail version of OSX that could be installed on other machines at a prohibitivly high cost (likely, the difference in cost between the machine and its Apple counterpart) in order to discourage others from purchasing OSX by itself.
2) Revamped the Apple hardware line to make current generation PCs completely incompatable with the OS without major modifications. This would discourage sales since the modification would be very time consuming and not produce a stable product.
3) Shut down their computer division and focused instead on consumer electronics (very unlikely but possible.
Not one of these three scenarios is good for the consumer.
Apple does not get copyright assigned to it without the author's permission. In the case of Apple, the permission is implicit when you decide to work for Apple. In the case of the FSF, per Why the FSF gets copyright assignments for contributors:
IOW, you can tweak gcc to your heart's content, but you better accept that if you want to contribute to the gcc people actually use - not some obscure fork or your own private repository - you're going to be giving copyright to the FSF.
I think you may be confusing "writing code under the GPL" and "writing code for an FSF project". gcc is ostensibly an FSF project. To cynics, it is perhaps the FSF project.
Can a fanboy tell me how the consumer wins in this case? Reading half of these comments make me sick... like people on here live to please Apple. For god's sake, who gives a sh*t if another company is trying to give us some lower cost mac clones? As much as you want to believe it, i dont think anyone here can make a case of how little teenie psystar made even a microscopic dent in apple's stock price. You don't have to feel bad for apple... they only need to look at the balance of their bank accounts to to turn their frowns upside-down.
The consumer doesn't win if your definition of winning means lower prices. What it does mean is better integrity of the overall brand image of Apple computer. It means that you are guaranteed a computer that doesn't suck nearly as much as a PC. It means you don't have a computer with excessive hardware specs that the software cannot begin to dream of utilizing. I would rather have a slower processor if I know it was made better than the faster one. So the consumer wins by having a computer that they can trust is worth the money they spent on it. As a former PC owner, when you examine the total cost of ownership, Mac's are WAY cheaper because they are WAY more reliable and the hardware doesn't suck (like on a Dell, HP, Toshiba, fill-in-the-blank PC manufacturer). I have owned them all and all have hardware problems after about 1 year. 2 and 1/2 years with my iMac, not so much as a hiccup. It is ridiculous.
QUESTION:
Why are people still talking about the End-User-License-Agreement and Psystar in the same sentence...
Psystar is NOT an End-User...
Fun times!
(eagerly awaits the Mac Tablet...)
Because Psystar must enter into the agreement on behalf of the end-user to pre-install the software. Before delivery of the system takes place, they /are/ the end-user.
With alllllll the people on this forum and 'round the world that love to turn their pcs into Macs, why the heck are you glad Psystar is going under?
I rarely got a chance to look at Psystar's systems but for the most part, they were cheaper than Macs but more expensive than PCs...they were designed for folks who were somewhat technical but didn't have the time or knowledge to go about buying $400 in hardware and converting it to a Mac.
I, personally, would have loved to see this in court...Psystar challenging Apple's OS license (I think the license is completely absurd...and please don't reply with "well, you knew what you were getting when you bought it so be quiet"). It's not illegal until the courts rule it illegal. It may be Apple's "policy" but ultimately the way that policy is interpreted and used and then sued upon does it become legal or illegal. And we all know the EULA on pretty much anything these days is impossible to read in laymen's terms.
I like the Macs but I hate the price. I also hate the fact that machines like the iMac are an "all in 1 machine" (meaning the monitor) and that my beautiful 24" monitor becomes a very large paperweight. I have a Mini but for the price (over $900 after upgrades at Apple) it's not worth it (disclaimer...not worth it for MY needs and as a consumer I have an opinion).
Gimme a desktop like the good old days...something around $800, not built into a monitor and includes a keyboard/mouse without charging me $100 "extra" for the combo. Yeah, I know Apple doesn't want to do that right now (or the last 10 years) but OBVIOUSLY there is a market if companies like Psystar set up shop to fill this void, but moreover, all the thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people that are converting their pc to a Mac with the Hackintosh folks which is just as much a blow (and likely worse) to Apple than Psystar.
Lemme guess, someone's gonna reply telling me to go out and buy one of those really cheap $2700 Mac Pros.
-Eric
I rarely got a chance to look at Psystar's systems but for the most part, they were cheaper than Macs but more expensive than PCs...they were designed for folks who were somewhat technical but didn't have the time or knowledge to go about buying $400 in hardware and converting it to a Mac.
I, personally, would have loved to see this in court...Psystar challenging Apple's OS license (I think the license is completely absurd...and please don't reply with "well, you knew what you were getting when you bought it so be quiet"). It's not illegal until the courts rule it illegal. It may be Apple's "policy" but ultimately the way that policy is interpreted and used and then sued upon does it become legal or illegal. And we all know the EULA on pretty much anything these days is impossible to read in laymen's terms.
I like the Macs but I hate the price. I also hate the fact that machines like the iMac are an "all in 1 machine" (meaning the monitor) and that my beautiful 24" monitor becomes a very large paperweight. I have a Mini but for the price (over $900 after upgrades at Apple) it's not worth it (disclaimer...not worth it for MY needs and as a consumer I have an opinion).
Gimme a desktop like the good old days...something around $800, not built into a monitor and includes a keyboard/mouse without charging me $100 "extra" for the combo. Yeah, I know Apple doesn't want to do that right now (or the last 10 years) but OBVIOUSLY there is a market if companies like Psystar set up shop to fill this void, but moreover, all the thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people that are converting their pc to a Mac with the Hackintosh folks which is just as much a blow (and likely worse) to Apple than Psystar.
Lemme guess, someone's gonna reply telling me to go out and buy one of those really cheap $2700 Mac Pros.
-Eric
Well they are and they are not... They are in the sense they they are the (alleged) original purchasers. They are not in the sense that they are a business and are held to different legal standards than you or I would be. Besides the statement is moot. Traffic laws (for example) still apply to people who do not possess a drivers license.QUESTION:
Why are people still talking about the End-User-License-Agreement and Psystar in the same sentence...
Psystar is NOT an End-User...
Fun times!
(eagerly awaits the Mac Tablet...)
A more apt question is not "who" is the end user, but "why" we are calling anybody an "end user". Apple uses a "Software License Agreement". Not an "End User License Agreement". In a sense, Apple's licensing terms apply to everybody equally if you are an end user or a reseller.