Submitted by The Mac Observer has found out that Psystar has indeed decided to appeal the case it lost against Apple. “Psystar has officially filed its Notice of Appeal in the copyright suit it lost against Apple Inc., according to a court document obtained by The Mac Observer. The step was a formality in the appeals process, but until it was filed, it was unclear if the company would actually mount an appeal.”
Given the reputation they’ve created for themselves in the court case, I don’t expect them to have much of a chance in the appeal. I’d still like to know where they’re getting the finances to continue this. It’s certainly not coming from their sales, that’s for sure.
It is being privately funded by Rudy Pedraza, or his brother, I can’t remember which. They are independently wealthy and billionaires. Psystar is pretty much a hobby since they are so young.
Billionaires from what, their father’s drug money?
Who knows. I really have no idea, just that there was an article where one of the brothers explained he was funding it all out of his personal accounts. They claim to be independently wealthy, maybe ask them where the money came from.
ha very apropros video choice thom
I knew what the video was just from its title.
Could we drop this topic from OSAlert already?!
Why? It’s just a flesh wound. Nothing is settled yet :p
Psystar : “… I’ll bite your ankles off.. !”
I’m just waiting for Apple to move on in disgust and having Psystar yelling “coward!” – what a victory that’ll be :p
why do I have to think about the black knight now ?
Thanks !
The prospects for success here seem few and none. Some other company who implement the project of delivering hackintoshes to customers in a different way might well be able to do it without breaching copyright law. But the way Psystar chose to do it seems to have been obviously in breach, so its hard to see why they are appealing.
This then raises the question of who is funding it, and why. PJ’s view of the matter – an assault on open source by well known suspects – seems hysterical and to have no rational foundation, since its not clear that if Apple were to lose it would have any effect at all on open source. It is also surely clear that if MS or some other serious company were going to fund a challenge to the locking of OSX to Macs, they would choose a more competent set of guys as a stalking horse, and coach them so they had a better chance of being legal in the way they operated.
Still, one does wonder why anyone would spend the money on such a hopeless appeal, and why whoever is doing it.
I doubt that its MS or Dell, solely on the basis that they would do things more competently. But even were it, that would not discredit the position. One would really like to see a serious company like Dell mount or fund a challenge to the idea that a software maker can sell at retail, and then go on to constrain the environment this purchased copy is installed into.
This always was the serious issue here, not the particular method Psystar used to get OSX onto its machines. The pity of the thing is that the serious issue has not yet been legally tested.
The reason PJ thinks* this case is an assault is the impact that this case could have on the GPL. While Apple currently restricts actions after sale with the EULA, thats not the only issue. The GPL is basically the same thing, only it give more freedoms than you would normally have. If we say that a user can do whatever they want with software after they acquire it, you basically invalidate part of the GPL. I don’t know why she thinks the case is actually an assault on the GPL by certain parties, but I do see her reasoning of the end result. I don’t think there is a chance that anything will change, as most software companies use EULAs and I cant see them giving them up.
(*This is just my interpretation of what I have read on her site posted by her.)
Edited 2010-01-18 15:10 UTC
This is the actual nonsense part, and the reason why PJ is kind of becoming the ridicule of open source and GPL experts. The GPL != an EULA. The entire mechanic behind is is COMPLETELY different.
And no, I’m not going to explain that in detail YET AGAIN. If people still don’t know this, then so be it.
I’ve always thought that this was Cupertino spin. The GPL is not a EULA, and does not depend on click through or consent for its validity. What the GPL does is to give you exemptions to the normal copyright law restrictions on copying. This is something anyone can do on anything which they are the copyright holder of. I can, for instance, write a novel, and then distribute it. When I do so, I will have all the default copyright rights.
But I can release it and exempt people who buy copies from some of them. For instance, I might say that owners of copies have the right to make one and only one extra one for their own use. Or to make derivative works out of chapter one, as long as the rest is reproduced unchanged. Or I might release it as text and pdf, and require that if copied and further distributed, both text and pdf must be distributed.
If people break these conditions, they are in breach of copyright. But they have not consented to any EULA.
Now, in the case of software, it is protected by two things. One is copyright, which gives you rights to do things with your copy, in particular install it, but not make further copies or distribute copies.
The other is the EULA, which is a civil contract, and independent of copyright law. That is, it is binding or not regardless of what the law of copyright says.
This means that even if the EULA were to fall, even if all EULAs were to fall, you would still only have the right to make copies of GPL software, and make derivative works from it, as permitted by the law of copyright and the permissions given by the copyright conditions.
Consquently Apple could lose this case and it would not affect the GPL one iota. Indeed, even if all EULAs were to be ruled invalid, that would not affect the GPL. The GPL is about copyright, and that is what it depends on.
The same applies by the way to the abolition of copyright, it would not affect the validity of EULAs if it happened, because they are independent civil contracts.
The thing that might make a connection between them is that in the US if Blizzard is upheld, then the effect will be to transform EULA violations into copyright violations. However, the precendent of Vernor contradicts that, and we must wait and see what the resolution is. At the moment, its a moot point, and at the moment, to break a EULA is not automatically and unambigously a breach of copyright, even in the US.
But even if it were, it would still not mean that if Apple lost this case, it would invalidate or have any effect at all on the GPL. It would not. The only thing to do that would be changes in the law of copyright.
Edited 2010-01-18 16:54 UTC