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.
OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
51–60 of 132 posts
Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#53English 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.
Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#54Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#55"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).
Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#56English 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 th…
Naive first thought: it seems like an active standards body is required. Like for HTML. That took care of e.g. The CENTER tag.
Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#57I 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…
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.
Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
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.
Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#59Nice 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.
Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English
#60I 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!