OSx86 Shutdown Rumors Explained 600
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.'"
Apple going overboard? LEGAL security (Score:4, Interesting)
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 please listen...... (Score:2, Interesting)
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:Seriously, why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Apple is certainly well within their rights to protect their OS and we have always supported them in this effort. Our first-class moderating staff has helped ensure that direct links to any patches are not allowed. We have in the past linked to the homepage of Maxxuss - but not to the offending 10.4.4 patches - in the interest of news, but we've removed those links just in case."
funny thing, they removed links to supposedly infriging site, but put name of this site on the front page - using it as google keyword will lead you to the same site from the first hit
SLAPP (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:4, Interesting)
That one's easy. When they stopped having Woz.
the answer is simple (Score:1, Interesting)
move your hosting/company from the USA to any of the other 191 countries where the dmca has as much authority as toilet paper
due to recent events USA is last place i would want to set up a company (never mind visit as a tourist)
outsource it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SLAPP (Score:4, Interesting)
"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.
Re:Oh yeah? Well vector you! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Apple appears not to want anyone to link to Max (Score:1, Interesting)
Is this really illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
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]
Build My Own (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Speccy issues (PPC 603e seriously) (Score:1, Interesting)
I recall replying to this kind of troll and received my first down-mod, 'off-topic' if I'm correct.
Now: back to topic... What if there would be a port of OSX-server to x86? That way it would only be interesting for companies to pirate the software, which they would not likely do with mission-critical servers. Be my guest to comment on this thought, I'm not that uptodate with the hacking/cracking of OS X to x86. And why not Sun-machines?
Re:Give it a rest (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:wiki is INCORRECT... the sound resource is from (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/24/early_apple_
Re:Apple please listen...... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad link (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:geek please listen (Score:2, Interesting)
Most folks named Joe and affectionately called "Sixpack" would probably think something along the lines of "why" if you started talking about your modded OSX. I don't think that this would really affect the popularity of the stock Mac experience.
Nope, and that's exactly the point. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nope, and that's exactly the point. (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple's margin on iPods is much, much larger than zero. Lots of profit there.
Apple knows where the profit is and where the profit isn't.
Re:Give it a rest (Score:3, Interesting)
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. There's a word for that, but I can't remember what it is. Hypacro... No. Uh, hipocra... closer, but no.
Meh, it will come to me.
Re:Disgusting. (Score:2, Interesting)
So you are buying something you don't own? That sounds like deceptive tactics to me but they have been getting away with this for years. When you rent a car you sign a very long form a number of times and explicitly agree that you don't own the car and will bring it back undisturbed. This sounds a lot like what Apple wants but without the contract. Who is immoral?
The big problem here is the lousy law called the DMCA. The software companies have a law that gives them more powers that even that rental car contract allows for and you haven't even signed anything? That is a huge stick that is bound to be abused. If you want to be a good American and show the rest of the world how much you value freedom of the individual get rid of that law and any other law that treats people like cattle.
The real reason I followed this thread is because I'm following the linux on mac/intel progress. Running linux on quality hardware has interested me since linux first ran on alpha. OSX on cheap PCs, is that a double negative?
Re:Nope, and that's exactly the point. (Score:3, Interesting)
Would they? In may [theregister.co.uk] iPod market share was 87.3%. That represents 32+million [cnet.com] iPods in 2005 of the total 36.6 million sold. So, Apple is missing out on 4.6 million mp3 player sales. Of those how many people wouldn't buy strictly because it is Apple? How many of those would use the iTMS? Let's say 100% of those 4.6 million people were allowed to use iTMS. How much more money would that leave for Apple?
ZERO because Apple makes at most .04 [geek.com] So again, let's say Apple makes 0.04*4.6million*10(songs) (saying all of those 4.6 million bought 10 songs over the lifetime of the product). That gives us $1.84M. How does that compare with margins on iPod? Let's do the same comparison. 4.6M*299*0.19 = $261M (this would be the same $$ if Apple convinced just 32.2K of those 4.6M to buy an iPod and buy 0 songs from iTMS. (The latter assumes the avg price for an iPod across the board is $299 and all iPods are selling equally well by %)
Which would you rather do? Try to increase sales by 32k or try to convince 4.2 million people to buy 10 songs from your store, or 2.1 to buy 20, or 1.05 to by 40 etc.....
(note: I also did not address the licensing fees Apple may retain because that involves far too much speculation about terms, pricing etc...)Re:Nope, and that's exactly the point. (Score:2, Interesting)
technical battle over (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple, release your OS to the masses! (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't understand why Apple has restricted their OS.
Unless they have a "deal" with Microsoft (non-compete), they stand to gain a large market share of users by simply providing their OS separate from hardware. Imagine running OS/X on Sun, Intel, AMD... etc?
Apple, "do the math" -- you have a good product, let people use it legitimately (they're going to anyway!).
Re:Nope, and that's exactly the point. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Poems (Score:3, Interesting)
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 market progresses in a way that benefits everyone. :)