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Comment by bumblebird | Hacker News Reader

It's not about little guy vs big guy. It's about what's right and what's wrong. I think the judgement was right.

My favorite line from the article which I think captures the real point here is: "So, if freedom matters to you, don't sell out the goal of a completely free operating system, without any proprietary blobs at all." This is not about freedom, this is about making money off someone else's work.

There is nothing wrong with making money off of someone else's work, if they allow/encourage you to do so. The Creative Commons "Allow commercial use" and the GPL _explicity_ give someone else the permission to make money off of my work. Red Hat, a $5Billion+ company, owes much of it's value to the work of others.

What's happened with PsyStar, is that they tried to do this _without_ the permission of Apple, and did so with software that was distributed under a restrictive commercial EULA. They didn't respect the Author's (Apple) intent regarding their software. That's the issue at hand (in my opinion) here.

I'm actually celebrating this judgment a bit - It highlights the value we get from Free Software. Nobody is going to come knocking on my door, sending lawyers, or dragging me into court because I'm running a business installing (modified) Linux on Computers. Indeed, the community will actually support me in my efforts to do so, http://www.linuxdriverproject.org.

"They didn't respect the Author's (Apple) intent regarding their software."

Huh, is there a law about respecting author's intents?

As long as EULA's in software are legally binding, yes.

Apple represents its intent with the License It distributes its software under (In this case, a restrictive commercial EULA). If Apple distributes NO license, then standard copyright laws apply. Standard copyright law certainly does not allow Psystar to resell duplicates of Apple's software. Nor does Apple's restrictive commercial EULA.

And regardless, I think we can all view this case on two levels, what is correct by Law, and what we in the community think is reasonable by our guidelines.

Some things that are considered valid by Law (The DMCA's anti-decryption clause) may be seen as negative by those in the community (In fact, by anybody who want to play the DVD that they purchased on their OpenBSD computer)

In the case of PsyStar, I think they are stepping outside the Legal and the mainstream-free-software-community lines in their behavior.

There's the EULA side of things, and there's the copying to RAM or hard disc side of things. That's why Apple won.

Neither of those things have anything to do with "respecting the intent of the author."

My intent for my new software that I am writing, is that white people do not use it. Seriously, this is not a troll (it is not really my intent), but you must realize that is a dangerous mindset.

The authors intent of use terminates at first sale, if you buy a painting from me, I cannot tell you that it can only be framed in a gold frame. I can make it a stipulation of sale and make you provide a gold frame before purchase but if you transfer it to a walnut frame after sale, I have no rights to enforce. Now if you start making prints of my painting then you have violated my copyright which does not transfer. if that nuance changes then the business tactics of the Apples and Sonys will get measurably worse.

On a more realistic note what if Apple decides that their offerings caters to the 175+ IQ group and decides that they will only sell to those individuals, any secondary sale by a different entity to a non 175+ individual would violate their rights and their intentions.

I'll point out the obvious - PsyStar was making duplicates of Apple's software and reselling it.

There is a difference between restrictions such as "You may not make copies of this software and sell it for $$$", "You may not make modifications of this software and resell it" and some fundamentally illegal restrictions. I, and most people in the community, believe that the author of software should be able to restrict whether others have to attribute them as the author, can sell duplicates of it, whether others can redistribute duplicates of it, and whether others can modify and redistribute duplicates of it. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons.

These are separate issues from the First-Sale doctrine that you are referring to. PsyStar wasn't selling PCs with retail box purchased from Apple in the same Bag. I would have been cheering PsyStar on if that were the case.

I understand what PsyStar was doing and that was covered in my post, with the copyright portion. My post was specifically focusing on the intention that you stated. In which, rightfully so the intentions of a company after first sale are none existent. PsyStar was trying to confuse this with a host of other items to try to convolute the issue.

Fair enough - can we agree that we should all respect the author's intent (even after sale) when it comes to:

  o Whether you can distribute duplicates to others.
  o Whether you have to provide Attribution on duplicates
  o Whether you can distribute modifications
  o Whether you can resell duplicates for $$$

  o Whether you can distribute duplicates to others.

Yes and no depends on who produced the duplicate. Each OSX apple produced dvd is a duplicate of the original work.

  o Whether you have to provide Attribution on duplicates

Yes

  o Whether you can distribute modifications

This is dependent on copyright, but in the case of Apple's stance I would say no.

  o Whether you can resell duplicates for $$$

Yes, if they are duplicates produced by Apple. No, if you are producing the "back-ups" and you are just a reseller. The "US" courts have been clear on personal use back-ups before.

Just watch out for infringement of patents :-/

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