Needless to say, this is a gross EULA violation (clarification: if you do it on non-Apple hardware, that is).
I was with you until you said something about restrictions. No court of law anywhere has said that you running standard X86 code in a standard X86 environment is illegal.
Effectively this is testimony to how well the GPL has been put together from a legal point of view, it is bad contracts, agreements and licenses that are tested in court.
Uncertainty over what adaption means serves their purposes. Uncertainty about the legality of taking somebody else's code and just relicensing it as GPL also serves their purpose. As does uncertainly over what results in a combined or derivative work with GPL binaries. The more solidly those lines are drawn then the less risk people face when calling GPL code from GPL incompatible code. That means people are more likely to do all the kinds of things that RMS fears (e.g. proprietary IDEs that call out to gcc and all that kind of thing, which RMS was talking about recently in relation to emacs interfacing with gcc).
The problem they face is that ultimately they can't create a license that prevents interoperation with proprietary code without also violating freedom zero. The only real way they have to discourage people from doing that is legal uncertainty. That is why it's very difficult to get a straight answer from the FSF or SFLC about what constitutes a combined work (other than them just claiming everything in the world is a combined work, which is the usual nonsense reply you will get). If they answer the question then it's them flagging up the best way to get around the GPL.
For example the FSF claim that distributing FooApp that links to a user chosen library at runtime and calls frobulate() requires FooApp to be GPL licensed, even if the developer of FooApp doesn't distribute the library with the app (or at all), so long as there exists a library implementing frobulate() that is GPL licensed. If you really press them on this point then they will argue that it depends if other non-GPL libraries also implement frobulate(). Of course that creates a large loophole - just create a very basic crappy implementation of the API and make it available, with the expectation that users will actually use the superior GPL library. So it's worth noting that the FSF doesn't actually accept that argument when it comes the readline and editline. Distributing a binary containing the symbols for the readline API [2] is a GPL violation as far as they are concerned. Yet they have not taken anybody to court over this yet even though the FSF owns the copyright for readline.
You can easily find people with quite different views on what the linking clauses in the GPL mean[3], so it's clear that there is a great deal of confusion out there. Nobody really knows what it means till it gets tested in court and the FSF have no interest in getting this cleared up because there is a non-zero chance that the courts don't agree with the FSF's interpretation of title 17. Once the red line is drawn over what is and isn't a combined work then people will be free to work around the GPL with minimal legal risk.
That much legal uncertainty is not the sign of a well written license, if you think the aim of a license is to clearly enumerate what rights people have. If you think a software license is a political weapon then you probably don't care that some people are being scared away from doing things they have a legal right to do with your code (but that you don't like).
[1] http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=118963284332223
[2] e.g http://tuomov.bitcheese.net/b/archives/2005/12/23/T22_53_01
Taken literally, your stance would mean that software licenses have no legal standing and binaries can be copied to anyone to be run anywhere -- it's just "running standard x86 code in a standard x86 environment" after all.
I'm not saying that EULAs are good. But they're not obviously invalid just because common sense suggests you should be able to run some software on some hardware.
If Apple's EULA is unenforceable, how about Oracle's licensing agreements? Or the GPL? These are complicated questions.
When it comes to an EULA, is that a contract or an license? Is there a meeting of the minds when one party has not read it or can't possible understand it even if they tried? If we then agree its a contract which both party must follow, how was the details of that contract communicated during the sale of the product? Are there parts which conflicts with contract/consumer protection laws, and what impact does that have to the contract as a whole?
A license agreement however is a bit easier if we agree that it is not a contract. If a person want to distribute a copyrighted work, then the law require them to seek permission from the copyright author. That permission is then granted through a license on specific conditions, conditions which the distributor has to prove in court if the permission is ever disputed. If the license would somehow be found to be invalid, then the distributor would be found distributing without a valid proof of permission.
Many people are of the second interpretation that licenses are not contract, which mean GPL and EULA's are under completely different legal theory and law. A contract can be unenforceable, and it doesn't impact the theory of software licenses.
(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software
within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is
already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during
software development; (c) using OS X Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.
In other countries, these parts of the EULA might not have a legal meaning at all.
(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using OS X Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.
Unless you are talking about the modification of the installation media. That, I am unclear on.
I looked into virtualising OS X so I could test an installer on a clean machine image, but the instructions always involve downloading patched ISOs from torrent sites. Seemed to me testing like that would make me less professional, not more professional :)
Installing 10.6 requires a bit of hackery unless you have a copy of the server version.
I have a bunch of VMs for testing my OS X apps on older versions of the OS.
Both commercial virtualisation platforms of OS X (VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop) have very easy "Create OS X VM from Recovery Partition" functionality.
Apple didn't make it a pain in the ass - if you need patched ISOs to install, it sounds like you're trying to do something they specifically don't allow.
How about you Mac-heads come to terms with Macs being bog standard X86 hardware and OSX being a bog standard X86 OS, and that running a bog standard X86 OS on bog standard X86 hardware is absolutely within everyone's legal right to do?
There's nothing special about your hardware nor OS. Get over it.
In the meantime I will virtualize OSX to get the Mac-specific parts of my build and tests running, and leave everything else on proper Linux.
I can buy any Thinkpad and boot Ubuntu with all hardware detected and functional. I cannot do the same with OSX.
Until you try to hook up an external screen, then all bets are off. I know because I recently attempted to do just that (w530, ubuntu 14.04 LTS). Compare that to buying a macbook pro and it's no contest. The hardware is simply better supported.
I don't care about pendantics. I care if I can plug a monitor into my laptop and have the damned thing work. Guess which one doesn't require me to battle with video drivers and make changes to the bios just to use the displayport?
(hint its Mach with a BSD userland).
I was referring to Linux as a proper, unrestricted Unix-environment.
Ironic really, given that OS X is certified UNIX 03, and I don't believe any Linux distribution is.
Being a properly free and unrestricted environment to work with and work in is not. That's something concrete, real and has actual value.
So why didn't you say that? You said "I was referring to Linux as a proper, unrestricted Unix-environment"
To be pedantic, Linux is the kernel. The environment, is the GNU userland, which is specifically NOT UNIX.
Yes I know it's Unix-like. But when you start your complaint with "it's not proper" try to at least know what you want it to be and what you don't want.
OS X is a "proper UNIX" operating system.
GNU/Linux distributions are free unix-like operating systems.
It's not, actually. You also have to do a lot of work to conform to the specs.
Linux doesn't. BSDs come very close. Mac OS X is conformant.
> Yes. Those legally binding EULAs with the associated EULA-violations we've constantly heard people getting jailed over.
Businesses care about software EULAs, but no end-user is getting jailed for running OS X on x86 hardware, however, people who sell hackintosh computers have been sued and lost in court [1][2]. Also, it is unlikely anyone would go to jail over this (due to criminal law versus tort law), however it is quite likely a company egregiously violating OS X's EULA and profiting from it would be sued and lose in court.
> How about you Mac-heads come to terms with Macs being bog standard X86 hardware and OSX being a bog standard X86 OS
"Mac-heads" know this; however, "Mac-heads" may or may not support Apple's EULA terms. I don't think that any Mac fans enjoy the fact that they cannot legally run OSX in more places.
> running a bog standard X86 OS on bog standard X86 hardware is absolutely within everyone's legal right to do
See [1] and [2] again. I disagree with the outcome of the Psystar court case and it's clear that you do too, however, it has, in fact, been tested in court and unfortunately the courts decided that it is not "within everyone's legal right to do".
> In the meantime I will virtualize OSX to get the Mac-specific parts of my build and tests running, and leave everything else on proper Linux.
I will too, and I highly doubt Apple will ever go after you or I for doing so, however, it may be unwise for a business to do so at a significant scale (but Apple may still turn a blind eye so as not to be hostile towards developers which enhance the platform).
As a final note, I am a 100% Linux user, I try to avoid using proprietary software, I do not enjoy using OS X, I do not like Apple's business practices, and I also think you should be able to run OS X in a VM legally, however, in the current version of the United States, that is not the case.
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/29/court_denies_final_p...