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What's the argument that this is OK from an ethical or moral perspective? Or does everyone acknowledge it's a willful violation of Apple's intellectual property and doesn't actually care?
We talking about the same Apple that is accused of child labor and other human rights abuses?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We talking about the same Apple that is accused of child labor and other human rights abuses?
Yes, but the majority of HN browsers will downvote/flag you for sharing the sentiment.
This also works surprisingly well in a docker image in Ubuntu. I use it as a relay to imessage for my windows pc to use with bluebubbles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We talking about the same Apple that is accused of child labor and other human rights abuses?
Yes, but the majority of HN browsers will downvote/flag you for sharing the sentiment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I was thinking along the same lines as you. There is a section in the linked github titled "is this legal"[0] [0] https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM#is-this-legal
That appears to be in reference to the act of running macOS on non-Apple hardware. The reference to paid commercial support is what will have the Apple lawyers knocking.
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It's an insane amount of work, but people do try - https://twitter.com/JonathanAfek/status/1350000894784495617 I think we'll eventually get there. Simply because the M1 macs will upsize the pool of people working on it.
It never ceases to amaze me how much free engineering effort is expended to work around Apple's resistance to open source and power user hostility.
This also works surprisingly well in a docker image in Ubuntu. I use it as a relay to imessage for my windows pc to use with bluebubbles.
What's the argument that this is OK from an ethical or moral perspective? Or does everyone acknowledge it's a willful violation of Apple's intellectual property and doesn't actually care?
Intellectual property is a social fiction devised to serve certain ends in society, and it's one that these days is largely shaped (i.e., laws have literally rewritten) by huge corporations (e.g., Disney, Apple) to serve their own commercial interests. EULA enforcement is not a matter of acknowledging some holy natural right, and onerous EULAs are not only ethically but often legally dubious themselves. That projects…
I didn't ask "is this legal?", I asked "is this ethical or moral?".
Apple invests what I assume to be a huge effort into making the Mac and selling it, including MacOS. I think we all agree that MacOS is an important part of the "Mac experience" that Apple is selling.
I'm going out on a limb here to say that people who spend a bunch of effort to subvert the technical controls that stop MacOS running on other hardware know that those are in place because Apple sells the MacOS as part of Mac; regardless of the legal technicality of whether they actually clicked through the EULA, read it, or their opinions on whether that license is legally binding.
We have a situation where Apple, the creator of a piece of work - MacOS, only wants people who purchase its hardware to benefit from it. Other people understand that, and try to benefit from it anyway. What is the ethical and moral position you need to take to say "it just doesn't matter what Apple, the creator, thinks."
So what's your theory here? Apple is big enough and profitable enough that meaningful harm to Apple is the determining factor? So it's OK to infringe on IP rights of big profitable companies, or where you weren't going to buy the hardware product anyway?
Or is it that no concept of property exists outside of the physical realm - so that e.g. musicians should have no control over who records their performances, nor artists over who reproduces their work, nor developers over who uses their software and for what purposes?
What's the argument that this is OK from an ethical or moral perspective? Or does everyone acknowledge it's a willful violation of Apple's intellectual property and doesn't actually care?
I never read the EULA when I put MacOS on my Thinkpad, so I'd file it under "willful ignorance" if I were you.
"I know Apple doesn't want me to use it this way, and I know I shouldn't, but I'm going to do it anyway even though it's wrong"
"I know Apple doesn't want me to use it this way, but they shouldn't have a say in it, so it's not really wrong"
Would be interested to know how you're thinking about your decision to run MacOS on your Thinkpad from that perspective.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intellectual property is a social fiction devised to serve certain ends in society, and it's one that these days is largely shaped (i.e., laws have literally rewritten) by huge corporations (e.g., Disney, Apple) to serve their own commercial interests. EULA enforcement is not a matter of acknowledging some holy natural right, and onerous EULAs are not only ethically but often legally dubious themselves. That projects…
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There's a lot of railing against copyright law, EULAs, etc. which have nothing to do with what I'm asking. I didn't ask "is this legal?", I asked " is this ethical or moral? ". Apple invests what I assume to be a huge effort into making the Mac and selling it, including MacOS. I think we all agree that MacOS is an important part of the "Mac experience" that Apple is sellin…
Intellectual property is a legal construct, and the thing being violated here is a EULA. (I'd also hardly describe what I wrote as ‘railing against’ anything. I just stated some facts about what IP is.)
> So what's your theory here? Apple is big enough and profitable enough that meaningful harm to Apple is the determining factor?
My ‘theory’ is that meaningful harm is a pretty good criterion for ethical objections in general, and that well-founded moral objections to things which are harmless are exceptional. This isn't a novel or controversial view; it's foundational to liberalism.
> Or is it that no concept of property exists outside of the physical realm - so that e.g. musicians should have no control over who records their performances, nor artists over who reproduces their work, nor developers over who uses their software and for what purposes?
I'd say that physical property is also an instrumental legal concept. Its existence, like the existence of intellectual property, is mostly grounded in histories of power and its exercise. But there are good arguments for its usefulness in certain contexts, and there are good moral arguments related to ownership. And the best arguments relating to ownership of physical things don't apply to ideas because ideas are not like physical things.
Your question, as posed, also overlooks the fact that intellectual property as it actually exists in fact does little to ensure that artists have control over their work. In the same way, Apple's policy on the use of macOS on non-Apple hardware is totally outside the control of actual developers who work at Apple.
If you'd like to tell me about how developers at Apple have an interest in ensuring that macOS is not used on non-Apple hardware... congratulations: you've just started outlining a case for how projects like the one in the OP are meaningfully harmful.