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OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

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Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#111

Post by reagency »

Udo wrote: post #88
tymekpavel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I cannot, don’t even think about it, just plain can’t, make money from MPEG/H.264/AVC videos I create. For that, I need to buy another something from somebody." This was pretty surprising to me. Why does Apple not allow making money from MPEG videos that you create? Does this include uploading them to YouTube?

Interesting, this means you can't use OS X to make your videos if you're a Youtuber.

Does YouTube pay the license fee for YouTube viewer? I would expect so.

Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#112

Post by reagency »

moe wrote: post #107
jzwinck wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next version of FIX can try, but everyone stopped upgrading FIX versions years ago. Also, once you standardize the liquidity field, you need to think about its values. These expand continuously...it used to be two or three values, now some systems use a dozen or more. Basically, if you want a protocol for legal documents, you may as well use an existing one, such as PDF, XLS, TeX, etc. Trying to embed more domain…

Well, let's not forget we're talking about lawyers here, who already work with a versioned single source of truth (The Law). All I'm asking is that we upgrade their tooling and process. Your outlook for the abstraction potential seems overly pessimistic. Most of Law boils down to a cascade of intermingled conditionals, nothing a computer couldn't handle. Of course a bit of human intervention will always be required,…

There is no single source of truth. Every court case creates a new version of kaw, called case law.

Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#113

Post by Udo »

reagency wrote: post #111
Udo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, this means you can't use OS X to make your videos if you're a Youtuber.

Does YouTube pay the license fee for YouTube viewer? I would expect so.

That's not the point. With the built-in encoder, people create movies which they make money from. Now, Youtube recodes those when you upload them, however, the "original" movie was created on a Mac. And apparently the license states you can't profit from making H264 videos on OS X.

Whether this is something people could actually get sued for is doubtful. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if some shady company who is nominally a member of the consortium chose to go after the more successful Youtubers. At the very least it's something a consortium company could use to take down videos they don't like.

Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#114

Post by Zarel »

anjbe wrote: post #26

I 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…

That's a copyright license, though, which is different from a Terms of Service, which is what the OS X thing is.

A copyright license gives positive rights. It gives you permission to do something that would otherwise be illegal. If you're not big on copyright, it's easy enough to write a very short license that boils down to "I give you ALL the permission."

A ToS takes rights. It's a contract to agree not to do something that would otherwise be legal, in exchange for permission to use the software or whatever.

That's why a copyright license boils down to "You can do A, B, C" while a ToS boils down to "You can't do A, B, C".

You need to agree to a ToS before using software for it to be valid, since it governs usage, and it can't take away rights unless you agree to it.

On the other hand, you don't need to agree to a copyright license, since it only governs copying, and it only grants rights. You only need to read it if you need the rights it grants.

Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#115

Post by dogweather »

pidg wrote: post #93
joosters wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's bizarre, especially since as far as I can tell, the voice synthesizer hasn't been improved in years. (the command 'say hello' sounds something like 'yellow' to my ears)

I can only think of one commercial track that uses the voice synth - Cow Cud is a Twin by Aphex Twin[1] uses the 'Hysterical' and 'Bells' voices. And those aren't "remixed" - they're used straight - which makes me wonder what the full license terms are (I agreed blindly and can't find a copy of the license now...) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbOqgWifXgU

Here's the license text:

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1011.pdf

> F. Voices. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you may use the system voices included in the Apple Software (“System Voices”) (i) while running the Apple Software and (ii) to create your own original content and projects for your personal, non-commercial use. No other use of the System Voices is permitted by this License, including but not limited to the use, reproduction, display, performance, recording, publishing or redistribution of any of the System Voices in a profit, non-profit, public sharing or commercial context.

So while you can be creative with these in private, you better not share it with anyone. I wanted to sum it up simply, and decided that no remixing probably captured the spirit of this well.

Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#116

Post by joliv »

acd wrote: post #90

Legal agreements was used to be a agreement between two parties where an equal agreement was reached. EULA tends to be one sided agreements where the company take away your rights. "I gotta run it on Apple hardware (no Hackintoshes). I can’t help anyone else do that." Isnt help anyone else doing that taking away your legal right of free speech? I have also seen agreements where the company says you may not publicly m…

When you take a loan from the bank, you sign this sort of one-sided agreement. I think this has always been the case.

Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#117

Post by djhn »

noonespecial wrote: post #38

So we're at the point now that legal documents need comments to be human readable. I wonder how long it will be until they look like perl.

> So we're at the point now

Has that not been the case for most of our history? Prior to the 20th Century most humans couldn't read legal documents of their time because they couldn't read. There's a reason "scribe" was a profession.

As for the 20th century, is there any evidence that legal documents were more legible earlier than they are now?

Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#119

Post by moe »

reagency wrote: post #112
moe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, let's not forget we're talking about lawyers here, who already work with a versioned single source of truth (The Law). All I'm asking is that we upgrade their tooling and process. Your outlook for the abstraction potential seems overly pessimistic. Most of Law boils down to a cascade of intermingled conditionals, nothing a computer couldn't handle. Of course a bit of human intervention will always be required,…

There is no single source of truth. Every court case creates a new version of kaw, called case law.

Well, the body of this case law (and all other laws) is what I refer to as "single source of truth".

Yes, "single source" is very much an euphemism.

In practice it's far from a single source, but rather a poorly synchronized mess. Which is exactly what I'm proposing to fix.

If we were to wrap it into a github-style model then cases could be represented as branches. Case-law would evolve in the form of patches and pull-requests.

Re: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English

#120

Post by JohnTHaller »

threeseed wrote: post #10
JohnTHaller wrote: post #5

Earlier 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…

I was referring to the fact that it was primarily due to Apple refusing to support any format other than this, not that they were the sole patent holder or sole beneficiary. Google and Mozilla were all for standardizing on an open format. Microsoft was basically indifferent and was going to drift whichever way the wind blew. Apple was against the proposed open formats and insisted on standardizing on the proprietary format they had a stake in both in terms of sharing in the patent revenue and the fact that they already had hardware decoding support in their iDevices. The latter point is likely the main driver.
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