The sale of the Mac OS implies that the customer already has a Mac to install it in, which means that the customer has previously payed for Apple's previous revision of OSX and Mac hardware. It is, essentially, only licensed as an upgrade to an existing system, much like the Windows "upgrades" that require a previous version to have been installed. The price of OSX as a stand-alone OS would probably be somewhere at or above $200, assuming enough high-volume sales.
What have they done that is "illegal"? The EULA is a legally binding contract no matter how you slice it, unless local or federal law determines otherwise. They broke a legally-binding contract. Civil suits are still lawsuits, particularly when the law is not definitely clear for a specific situation.
And yes, it is PsyStar who is suing Apple for the EULA, so PsyStar is fighting within California judicial jurisdiction. So, it's not that they have necessarily broken a law, they are preemptively challenging the possible existence of an unfavorable (for PsyStar) legal ruling. Read the article before commenting.
Waffell911, I understand your arguments but they are not legally sound. The court could care less about who’s driving what on which road. If this goes to litigation, the court will decide it based on law.
The EULA applies to the END user. Apple will have to convince a court that PsyStar is the End User. While that may seem obvious to you, from a legal perspective it is a significant point that Apple will have to prove. If PsyStar is not an End User, the EULA is worthless. PsyStar will argue that they are a system integrator not the end user. And the fact that they sell the systems to others is a difficult fact that Apple will have to argue around in court. So to say that PsyStar broke a 'legally binding' contract assumes two things:
1. That the EULA is legally binding. This will take a court to decide.
2. That PsyStart is an END USER who is bound by the terms of the EULA. Again, it will take a court to decide and Apple has to prove it.
If you review the case law surrounding EULAs you will find that no court in the USA has ruled that EULA shrink-wrap licenses are totally binding. The cases that have been decided involve the legality of sections of such licenses. If you know of a case that address EULAs in general I'd love to read it.
You state: The sale of the Mac OS implies that the customer already has a Mac to install it in, which means that the customer has previously paid for Apple's previous revision of OSX and Mac hardware. It is, essentially, only licensed as an upgrade to an existing system, much like the Windows "upgrades" that require a previous version to have been installed.
This is absolutely false. You can have a Mac computer that has only OS 8 or OS 9 on it and buy a copy of OSX and install it. This I did with my B&W G3. I plunked down my $129 and received a copy of OSX which I installed on the B&W G3. No previous copy of OSX was present or required. The EULA says nothing about any requirement to have a previous copy of OSX installed. It is sold as a complete stand alone OS. Apple will never try to argue this in court; they would get hammered.
Nobody has sued anyone yet that I am aware of. PsyStar has not filed suit in California. It is unlikely that PsyStar will file a pre-emptive lawsuit, especially in California. If they do decided to file a preemptive-lawsuit they would ask for judicial relief in their local jurisdiction. As I said before the ball is in Apple’s court and we will have to wait to see how they will proceed.
