OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English | Hacker News Reader

OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

robb.weblaws.org

381 pointsdogweather129 comments

I think there’s a lot to be said for a license that’s so simple it doesn’t need a summary. For example, take the ISC license:

“Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

“The software is provided ‘as is’ and the author disclaims all warranties with regard to this software including all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event shall the author be liable for any special, direct, indirect, or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of this software.”

Yes, there are a lot of things it doesn’t cover. There’s no copyleft in this license, and no restriction on commercial use, and so on. Some will argue the problems with that, but it’s also a strength—because the license does less, explaining these concepts is unnecessary, and the resulting license text is much simpler.

There aren’t that many licenses like that. Even Creative Commons summary pages state: “This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license. This deed highlights only some of the key features and terms of the actual license. It is not a license and has no legal value. You should carefully review all of the terms and conditions of the actual license before using the licensed material.” Who actually does that? But it seems dangerous not to.

    $ wc -w * | sort -n
         60 wtfpl
        118 isc
        140 zlib
        167 mit
        190 unlicense
        207 bsd
       1055 cc0
       1234 lgpl3
       2487 gpl2
       2699 cc-by
       3111 cc-by-sa
       4025 lgpl2.1
       5174 agpl3
       5209 gpl3
      25876 total

> The software is provided ‘as is’ and the author disclaims all warranties with regard to this software including all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event shall the author be liable for any special, direct, indirect, or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of this software.”

Not compatible with law in some jurisdictions. Which is one of the problems with complex licences - the more stuff there is in them the more chance they have of not being compatible with local law.

I could add a single word to the ISC license in order to make it incompatible with every license in existence including itself (to an extent). You can not measure scope or complexity by counting words.

The problem with the "El Capitan License" is not the length but from vague phrases, unlimited scope, and inconsistency. It declare third-party agreements that doesn't exist in the document. It tries to limit fair-use, even if the law do not allow copyright licenses to do this. It tries to be both a sold product, a rented product, and a borrowed product. It try to limit commercial use for a product intended for commercial use.

Shortness of a license should not be a goal in itself. The GPL is long because without its length we would not have everyone pitching in patches to Linux or gcc for all different architectures. I know non-copyleft licensed software also gets collaboration, but Linux's and gcc's near universal hardware support seems to require the coercion of copyleft. Without copyleft, we would never have had any sort of free Objective C compiler either, and I'm still waiting for Apple to do good on their promise to free up Swift.

Also, unlike EULAs, the GPL is meant to be understood. Have you read it? It is long, but without reaching EULA lengths, and it's written with clear definitions and a language that aims for clarity. It was written by hackers and lawyers. If you're having trouble understanding it, there's a FAQ:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Apple doesn't publish EULA FAQs, as they do not want widespread public understanding of each item in their EULA.

As a counterpoint, netbsd has a permissive (3 clause bsd) license and the slogan "of course it runs netbsd". Copyleft definitely isn't required for universal hardware support.

That's a copyright license, though, which is different from a Terms of Service, which is what the OS X thing is.

A copyright license gives positive rights. It gives you permission to do something that would otherwise be illegal. If you're not big on copyright, it's easy enough to write a very short license that boils down to "I give you ALL the permission."

A ToS takes rights. It's a contract to agree not to do something that would otherwise be legal, in exchange for permission to use the software or whatever.

That's why a copyright license boils down to "You can do A, B, C" while a ToS boils down to "You can't do A, B, C".

You need to agree to a ToS before using software for it to be valid, since it governs usage, and it can't take away rights unless you agree to it.

On the other hand, you don't need to agree to a copyright license, since it only governs copying, and it only grants rights. You only need to read it if you need the rights it grants.

This was both insightful and highlights, i would argue, an unmet need. I would love simple write ups like this for specific software licenses.

In theory, tldrlegal.com is positioned to take this on, but in my experience they tend to deal with more pervasive licenses like MIT, GNU, etc.

Thanks! Maybe I've found my niche. I checked out tldrlegal.com first, but saw what you're talking about. It's more of a comparison tool for the bigger licenses.

https://tosdr.org/

Yes! That's a great site. Thanks for reminding me.

I always include a "plain english" copy of my contracts when I send them to customers. I state that it's there for reference only, not a substitute for a lawyer on their part, but that I've made the best effort to make it representative of the contract. Most of my client love it, some don't care, but I think it's something that has helped a lot of folks. I think most contracts should have one.

Should there be an intermediary the client needs to sign that the summary isn't a perfect representation of the contract? Kidding, of course. Mostly.

There is, but that's a detail omitted from the summary

No, because the signatory parties are still responsible for knowing what their signing anyway. If the summary was significantly different than the contents, then one MIGHT have an argument a judge could agree with, but in general, if you sign it, then you better have read it because you agreed to it, summary or no.

No competent client, or their lawyer, should trust that summary.

No summary or contract is trustworthy, so no, they shouldn't trust it. Trust is between parties, not between papers. It's more of a shortcut and guide. If there's something in the summary that's a red flag, well we just saved a lot of time by finding the matter fast. If not, then we should have a good idea what's in the contract, and if that contract significantly differs from the summary, then the party isn't trustworthy. It's much easier to read a contract with an idea of what it's supposed to say, than going in blind. With the summary, your mind is more focused on "is X true or false" rather than determine what it says, THEN see if the details are kosher.

No, but the summary might help avoiding bothering your lawyer if you see there's something you don't like right away in the summary.

I guess that's mostly the point really.

Tldrlegal seems dead, unfortunately.

I don't understand how practically all commercial software can get away with claiming that it isn't fit or warranted for any purpose. Apple's product demos and website advertise the OS performing lots of different tasks. If I bought a Mac and found I couldn't use it to browse the web or store photos, surely Apple's marketing is direct proof that they are warranting that it should be able to do these things?

It doesn't do anything and you can't use it for anything.

[I agree]

Nothing like that appears in the plain text license here. Are you reading it from somewhere else?

In any case, almost all warranty disclaimers start with "TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW" which, under consumer laws in most countries, requires the company to provide a product that can work as shown in all its advertising materials.

See my other post containing the actual text (all-caps). You're right about the 'permitted by law' bit but who knows what that actually covers? I've never seen a clear summary anywhere.

License agreements are long, the consumer laws are probably an order of magnitude bigger (and that's assuming you even know which bits are relevant)

Those are all valid points, but it isn't Apple's job to solve them, so it simply puts 'permitted by law' and moves on.

Well, it's a bit of an irrelevance whether or not they state 'as permitted by law', since everything in any license is restricted by the law. Nothing changes.

My point is that Apple (and every other company) makes no attempt to define what their software is meant to be able to do. The license tries to wash their hands of everything that they can.

If I buy a camera and it can't take photos, it's not fit for purpose and I can return it. If I buy a computer to be able to (say) Facetime chat with my relatives, and it doesn't do that due to a bug or incompatibility, it's a murky legal quagmire whether or not I could get a refund.

The distinction arises when the full text of a clause is not possible to claim by law, but some weakened or lesser version is OK: If you missed the 'maximum extent permissible' part, your clause would be completely invalidated. Its a hedge.

> In any case, almost all warranty disclaimers start with "TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW"

Which is an invalid clause in Germany and probably most other European countries. Any clause that goes beyond the extent permitted by the applicable law is automatically void in Germany. This is due to consumer protection laws. Therefore, most of these EULAs are probably void if it ever comes to law suit...

You are forgetting what the word "clause" means.

Is it actually? Because this is basically saying, "these are the conditions. if all or part of these conditions extend beyond the applicable law, then only the part that is within the law is applicable".

Legal agreements was used to be a agreement between two parties where an equal agreement was reached. EULA tends to be one sided agreements where the company take away your rights.

"I gotta run it on Apple hardware (no Hackintoshes). I can’t help anyone else do that."

Isnt help anyone else doing that taking away your legal right of free speech?

I have also seen agreements where the company says you may not publicly mention any security holes that you find in their software. Does a company have the right to take away your free speech in their license agreements? Have this been tried in the highest court?

"Isnt help anyone else doing that taking away your legal right of free speech?"

Not in the US at least. In the US the legal right only prevents the government making laws that abridge them. It doesn't prohibit any private person or company from limiting speech in any way they like.

> limiting speech in any way they like.

...that you agree to. In theory. And originally, only the federal government was so limited; states could and did have laws that would have been in violation of the first amendment, had the federal government instituted them.

When you take a loan from the bank, you sign this sort of one-sided agreement. I think this has always been the case.

> Slideshows made with Photo; same deal, don’t even think about using them for some commercial purpose.

??? Was Apple too cheap to buy the proper license for the default slideshow music? That sounds completely arbitrary and unexpected. (I doubt anyone will ever enforce this rule, but why is it there?)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407399 may have more to do with it.

Its weird that we do this dance, no one reads the terms and we if we ever have to choose between the agreement and our immediate need well... If a client needs you to spin up a vm but you're already running two who gives a rat's behind!

"I can't use El Captain with illegal copies of anyone's stuff" or break any local law. In which case I must delete everything.

Do you think Apple is required to write this? or is it just lawyers maxing out on the possibilities of licensing?

I guess it's more about Apple washing their hands, like if someone uses a Mac to plan a bombing or hack into something, no matter what happens no one can point a finger at Apple.

It's a long shot, but it's same kind of thing when your microwave says "it's not suitable for drying living animal"

The microwave is interestingly slightly different, it doesn't disown you. It's more like a cascading penalty: Say if you do something wrong in the house, then the house doesn't belong to you anymore. It's far fetched to accuse Apple in case of bombing, although we've seen anything in the US jurisdicting; as far fetched as it is to disown someone of their computer if they pirated an ebook (which has already happened with Amazon Kindle).

I think that "you are just loaning our software" will become (or is) defacto standard, say Apple discontinues iTunes, they can just remove it and no one can sue them because the lost their MP3 library because they were just loaning the content in the first place.

Another company that does the same is Valve with Steam, you do not own any of the games you have in your library, you just have momentary right to play them and if, say, Valve goes bankrupt and Steam just vanishes from the Internet you have no right to complain that you can't play your games anymore.

It's just to cover their asses so some nutjob doesn't find a loophole and milk them for half their worth.

This is cool. If I do something illegal, I'm not only allowed to, but obligated to delete all evidence of it.

* Unless that conflicts with local law. Which I believe in many places it does.

> I gotta follow all my local laws while I’m using it. (!) (Really? Whereever I live?)

Where I live, a lot of those rules conflict with local law.

Well then, it's quite simple, but then local law overrules Apple law. And Apple is nice enough to let you know this.

So we're at the point now that legal documents need comments to be human readable. I wonder how long it will be until they look like perl.

One company - http://www.legalese.io/turing.html - is working on this, perhaps inspired by Charles Stross' comments on this idea.

Oh man! I was thinking about the whole legal language should be something of a formal language a little less than a year ago. I'm glad someone is doing something along those lines.

> So we're at the point now

Has that not been the case for most of our history? Prior to the 20th Century most humans couldn't read legal documents of their time because they couldn't read. There's a reason "scribe" was a profession.

As for the 20th century, is there any evidence that legal documents were more legible earlier than they are now?

"I can’t sell access to my Mac via any kind of screen sharing."

This one was interesting to me. I thought maybe macminicolo.net might fall foul of this, if they rented out a mac mini to you, but it looks like they instead make you straight-up purchase a mac mini. http://www.macminicolo.net/jvmx_secure_signup.html

I wonder if this term/condition was in previous OSX releases and that's why they went this way, or whether it was a happy accident that they went with users purchasing a mac rather than renting one.

http://www.macincloud.com/ is similar, though it seems they rent you a mac per hour, so they're not technically giving you access to their mac: you're accessing the mac you rented.

Somebody buy this person a beer

Nice read. You should do more of these.

It would be great to have a site for crowdsourced EULA explanations of this sort.

Thanks! I never expected that so many people would want to see this.

So now I'm brainstorming about the best way to publish more of these, enable crowd sourcing, and get other lawyers involved.

Wow, that was really not as bad as I thought.

"I cannot, don’t even think about it, just plain can’t, make money from MPEG/H.264/AVC videos I create. For that, I need to buy another something from somebody."

This was pretty surprising to me. Why does Apple not allow making money from MPEG videos that you create? Does this include uploading them to YouTube?

It is to do with MPEG-LA licensing.

Apple and Microsoft licensed the H.264 codecs for content creation which is a per user cost. They know this based on how many downloads. Users who sell their videos need to pay MPEG-LA a license per view which Apple/Microsoft can't determine. Hence you are on your own.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar...

Thanks, this is a good explanation of the "why".

The tech industry sold its soul, mainly because of Apple, and standardized on the "free" H.264/MPEG standard for videos. The caveat is that it is only free to end users for consumption (hence "free") and the bits included to handle encoding/decoding within your operating system or browser, doesn't legally allow you to produce content for others to consume.

H.264 comprises a ridiculous number of companies. It isn't just Apple.

As we saw with VP8 there is no such thing as a truly free and open codec. Back in the day MPEG-LA was going to setup a VP8 patent pool but didn't bother and instead just licensed Google the infringing patents. If they didn't do this VP8 could have been open but not free.

There are just too many large and powerful players with competing interests and a penchant for litigating against any possible upstarts. The only way to fix the situation is to exempt all file formats from patent claims as it is clearly anticompetitive.

The only way to fix the situation is to exempt all file formats from patent claims as it is clearly anticompetitive.

This is clearly the correct answer, or at least part of it. Many real world problems in the technology industries would never have existed if intellectual property laws could not be applied to restrict communication and compatibility. Allowing patents to effectively restrict the transfer of data, because the tools available to either or both parties effectively require patented formats or similar, is either a tax on communication or a tool for censorship, depending primarily on the willingness of the patent holder to licence on useful terms.

Ironically, the US actually got this right in the case of fonts and copyrights, in that while a specific program to describe a font might be subject to copyright, the design of the font itself is not. Thus unlike certain other creative industries, no-one can go around claiming royalties on every publication displayed in a sans serif font because it looks a bit similar to something from the early 1900s and (insert dubious legal argument about derivative works restarting the copyright clock here).

MPEG-LA had a very long time to assemble their VP8 pool, but nothing ever materialized. The impression I got was that Google paid them for silence, in a way that let them save face. Regardless, it's a clear sign that patents are failing our society when it might be impossible to write a free video codec from scratch.

When will the patents expire? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA suggests that new patents are being added to the pool and full licensing fees are needed even if 999 patents are expired and 1 is active.

I was referring to the fact that it was primarily due to Apple refusing to support any format other than this, not that they were the sole patent holder or sole beneficiary. Google and Mozilla were all for standardizing on an open format. Microsoft was basically indifferent and was going to drift whichever way the wind blew. Apple was against the proposed open formats and insisted on standardizing on the proprietary format they had a stake in both in terms of sharing in the patent revenue and the fact that they already had hardware decoding support in their iDevices. The latter point is likely the main driver.

This is why we aren't seeing things like Opus codec support in Safari. Apple is engaging in a codec war. I really hope it makes them a lot of money because for me as a developer doing web audio it's like the difference between FireFox circa 2005 and IE.

Interesting, this means you can't use OS X to make your videos if you're a Youtuber.

Does YouTube pay the license fee for YouTube viewer? I would expect so.

That's not the point. With the built-in encoder, people create movies which they make money from. Now, Youtube recodes those when you upload them, however, the "original" movie was created on a Mac. And apparently the license states you can't profit from making H264 videos on OS X.

Whether this is something people could actually get sued for is doubtful. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if some shady company who is nominally a member of the consortium chose to go after the more successful Youtubers. At the very least it's something a consortium company could use to take down videos they don't like.

I think the MPEG-LA $ license is about distributing encoded videos that the viewer decodes. If YouTube transcodes, you aren't distributing encoded videos to anyone , except maybe YouTube itself, for one play.

But I could be mistaken, I haven't checked carefully.

Versus BSD:

Whatever, just remember we wrote it and if it fucks up, don't blame us.

Which is what Apple's license says, but with a bunch of additional terms unfavorable for the user and without access to the source code.

No it says nothing of the sort.

Judging from the article it does:

The author is clearly Apple and they are not responsible just as in the BSD license:

The Capitan is AS-IS, of course.

Unlike BSD, there is no source and a bunch of other very restrictive limitations, which is what I was commenting about.

1. I can’t use the Capitan with illegal copies of anyone’s stuff.

2. Apple didn’t sell me this software. They still own it, in fact. I’m just borrowing it.

3. If I install more Apple software, those are on loan as well.

...

And so on.

They place restrictive rights on the usage of the software and retain the ability to revoke your license. BSD does not, ergo it is different.

I'm not sure if this is also true in the US, but the ability to revoke a licence is implicit by law in many places - though the revoker may be liable for any losses caused by the revocation.

(from Yosemite's license, but I can't imagine that Apple have improved it):

C. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE APPLE SOFTWARE AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, AND APPLE AND APPLE'S LICENSORS (COLLECTIVELY REFERRED TO AS “APPLE” FOR THE PURPOSES OF SECTIONS 7 AND 8) HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE APPLE SOFTWARE AND SERVICES, EITHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES AND/OR CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, SATISFACTORY QUALITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, QUIET ENJOYMENT, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS.

D. APPLE DOES NOT WARRANT AGAINST INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE AND SERVICES, THAT THE FUNCTIONS CONTAINED IN, OR SERVICES PERFORMED OR PROVIDED BY, THE APPLE SOFTWARE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, THAT THE OPERATION OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE OR SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, THAT ANY SERVICES WILL CONTINUE TO BE MADE AVAILABLE, THAT THE APPLE SOFTWARE OR SERVICES WILL BE COMPATIBLE OR WORK WITH ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, APPLICATIONS OR THIRD PARTY SERVICES, OR THAT DEFECTS IN THE APPLE SOFTWARE OR SERVICES WILL BE CORRECTED. INSTALLATION OF THIS APPLE SOFTWARE MAY AFFECT THE AVAILABILITY AND USABILITY OF THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, APPLICATIONS OR THIRD PARTY SERVICES, AS WELL AS APPLE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

+ the usual warnings about not being suitable for use in nuclear facilities, aircraft or air traffic control, life support & weapons systems.

(I wonder if they'll be adding self-driving cars to that list?)

Why is Sudan of all places singled out and not like North Korea or Iran?

Or was that just reduced for brevity.

In the comments of the original article, the author mentions this condition applies to any country on the embargoed list [0] (which includes Sudan).

0: http://www.pmddtc.state.gov/embargoed_countries/

Just for the alliteration: sending it to Sudan. No offense intended.

> Apple didn’t sell me this software. They still own it, in fact. I’m just borrowing it.

Does this also apply to older versions of OS X that are actually paid for (such as Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion)? Or is this only for the "free" versions like Yosemite and El Capitan?

It applies to pretty much all software: you're licensing it, not buying.

Though it's actually a very bad summary in this particular case. If you've paid real money for a permanent copy of some software then in many jurisdictions you do effectively own that copy of the software. In those places, there may be quite severe restrictions on what the copyright holder can then restrict you from doing with your copy, even though they retain the main rights to the software itself, and in some cases there have been lawsuits which have made it to court and upheld limitations on the rightsholders' powers.

Even where there used to be potential distinctions between physical copies and things you acquired in purely digital form such as on-line downloads, the law is catching up in a lot of places. It's just doing so painfully slowly compared to the pace of development of technology, and sometimes with a few accidental/deliberate (delete as applicable) loopholes written into the newer laws that still seem rather favourable to copyright holders and the like.

They'll still put it in for the jurisdictions that it's valid, or maybe just as a chilling effect. I've signed an employment contract before which contained clauses that were invalid under the law (non-compete and also forced repayment of mandatory training when you leave too soon after), and when the employer was asked whether they knew they were invalid, they admitted they did. Those clauses were only enforceable to people who didn't know any better, and apparently that was sufficient reason to have them in there.

Yes, this is an all-too-common tactic with legalese. I assume that's why in some places even including certain provisions in a consumer contract or failing to advertise certain information about consumer rights is in itself against the law now.

You paid for the disc, but you are borrowing the "contents" of the disc.

Can anyone explain the Sudan thing?

The prohibition is against sending it to any “embargoed country”. Sudan is on the list: http://www.pmddtc.state.gov/embargoed_countries/

Specifically against exporting "dual-use" technology (suitable for both military and civilian use), in this case likely strong cryptography.

Of course it's completely pointless since they would just pirate the software anyway.

Funny, China seems to be on the list too... Or am I interpreting that list incorrectly?

China is indeed on that list, however to understand what you may or may not export to China you will have to read all of the relevant laws, which may or may not be the same as those for any other country.

I think in China case only bans selling weapons and other defense-related items.

If I'm just 'borrowing' El Capitan, then that means the copy I'm running belongs to them. Therefore, any intellectual property I develop using my copy could technically belong to them?

Come to Linux my brother, heed the call of salvation!

X Windows has traumatized me in the past.

You don't have to use it.

Downvoted for some reason, but there's Wayland and Mir.

it got a lot better. on my archlinux install (on a macbook), the only thing that did not work out of the box was wifi (i had to install proprietary broadcom drivers).

other than that, everything is fine and dandy. and it boots a lot faster than osx ever did.

Yup, indeed, running Arch on a 2013 MBA here. It's been a pleasure so far. Installing the broadcom driver was a breeze, and never had any issues.

No. If you paint a picture using a borrowed brush, you still own the picture, as well as the copyright on the creative work.

"I’ve got to read the separate rules that came with the fonts, and obey them. (I can only borrow those too.)"

Thanks for writing this. It would be great to have the font licenses in plain English too.

There outh to two sets of license agreements with all software, the legalese one and one like this - then I might actually read it.

I'll add one like this to my software now!

English isn't really a better exchange format for licenses than legalese. Arguably it's even worse due to the lossy conversion.

What we really need is a common legal markup language[1]. Sadly, the few efforts that I've heard about seem to be stagnating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_XML

The problem with legal markup is the same as with FIX, the financial data protocol (which is widely used).

Lawyers (finance people) will never stop innovating (increasing complexity), and they will not be one moment delayed by a protocol which falls short of their aspirations for sophistication (bamboozling). Therefore, the only adoptable protocols are mere transports. They might rigidly specify some commonly used things like property titles (stock orders) but foreseeing unusual or unknown requirements, such protocols will include custom extension features (user defined fields).

The end result is a protocol which is sort of useful but still does not suffice for the development of generic tooling. An example from FIX is the field which tells whether an order added or removed liquidity. The standard didn't have such a field, so now every exchange has its own different one.

Naive first thought: it seems like an active standards body is required. Like for HTML. That took care of e.g. The CENTER tag.

There is one. It cannot possibly move as fast as all the individual actors. Standards bodies can provide high quality at slow pace. Participants here want fast pace and only adequate quality.

I don't really see that as a problem, that's how all popular protocols evolve.

If all exchanges have invented a liquidity-field, then there's a good chance the next version of FIX will standardize it, no?

Imho the legal system is very much ripe for digitalization. Both on the low-end (where it pretty much consists of overhead), and even more so on the high-end, where the complexity of legal contracts between companies or states has long exceeded what any team of lawyers (much less a mere mortal) can comprehend.

The next version of FIX can try, but everyone stopped upgrading FIX versions years ago. Also, once you standardize the liquidity field, you need to think about its values. These expand continuously...it used to be two or three values, now some systems use a dozen or more.

Basically, if you want a protocol for legal documents, you may as well use an existing one, such as PDF, XLS, TeX, etc. Trying to embed more domain knowledge in the protocol will never work at a highly generalized level. It would be like asking HTTP to standardize e-commerce.

Well, let's not forget we're talking about lawyers here, who already work with a versioned single source of truth (The Law).

All I'm asking is that we upgrade their tooling and process.

Your outlook for the abstraction potential seems overly pessimistic.

Most of Law boils down to a cascade of intermingled conditionals, nothing a computer couldn't handle.

Of course a bit of human intervention will always be required, for value judgements and the "hard questions".

However, in my (limited) experience with lawyers, very little of the time and money that a lawsuit consumes goes into the actual decision making.

The overwhelming majority is wasted on process and formalities.

There is no single source of truth. Every court case creates a new version of kaw, called case law.

Well, the body of this case law (and all other laws) is what I refer to as "single source of truth".

Yes, "single source" is very much an euphemism.

In practice it's far from a single source, but rather a poorly synchronized mess. Which is exactly what I'm proposing to fix.

If we were to wrap it into a github-style model then cases could be represented as branches. Case-law would evolve in the form of patches and pull-requests.

FIX often standardize everyone's favorite custom fields after few years. The problem is that nobody is upgrading yet keep adding custom fields to their implementation, even worse sometimes back-porting tags from newer version but in incompatible ways (5.0 SP2 was released on 2011, but I've never worked with anything above 4.2 that was released 15 years ago.)

IIRC, #7 about the voice synthesizers appeared with 10.6. Prior to that, there was no mention of the voices in the license and commercial use of narrations produced with the system's voice synthesizer might have been legal.

That's bizarre, especially since as far as I can tell, the voice synthesizer hasn't been improved in years. (the command 'say hello' sounds something like 'yellow' to my ears)

I can only think of one commercial track that uses the voice synth - Cow Cud is a Twin by Aphex Twin[1] uses the 'Hysterical' and 'Bells' voices.

And those aren't "remixed" - they're used straight - which makes me wonder what the full license terms are (I agreed blindly and can't find a copy of the license now...)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbOqgWifXgU

Here's the license text:

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1011.pdf

> F. Voices. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you may use the system voices included in the Apple Software (“System Voices”) (i) while running the Apple Software and (ii) to create your own original content and projects for your personal, non-commercial use. No other use of the System Voices is permitted by this License, including but not limited to the use, reproduction, display, performance, recording, publishing or redistribution of any of the System Voices in a profit, non-profit, public sharing or commercial context.

So while you can be creative with these in private, you better not share it with anyone. I wanted to sum it up simply, and decided that no remixing probably captured the spirit of this well.

More voices have been added.

I did not read anything about installing Windows on Apple hardware and then running OSX Capitan in a virtual machine. Is that really allowed?

I think it might be!

As long as the OSX VM runs on Apple hardware, it's allowed.

Apple does not put any legal restrictions on what OS you choose to run on Mac hardware, you're free to install Windows on it (but then you'd better be complying with Windows' license terms)

The problem with VMs is that it presents virtual hardware to the Guest OS and as such it is not apple hardware by definition. Besides that Apple has a restriction that your guest OS must run under an Apple host OS.

Note that there is an interesting side case with vSphere ESXi where the host OS is a hypervisor not an apple provided OS. This appears to be legal as VMware clearly supports it, if an only if vSphere runs on apple hardware, but I'm not sure how that fits in the EULA.

This is a question I see pop up every now and then, it was never legal, but I just looked it up again.

Unfortunately, no, that's not allowed, your host OS must be an apple supplied OS.