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Making of a Eula breaking Computer Brand


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Hi guys!

I have some legal questions. Trying to understand...

 

History & Information regarding subject

(please add info if more information exist or the exsisting is false)

 

According to the apple Eula I'm not allowed installing Apple software/OS on non-apple hardware.

That is nothing new to this scene.

 

Psystar ı www

Metod: Modified version of Netkas EFI? from HDD

 

...sells a OSX based machine with (correct me if I'm wrong) a EFI that wasn't theirs..but a guy called Netkas?

Apple sued them, psystar won.

ı The Official Apple vs. Psystar Lawsuit ı Article by Cnet ı Article 2 by Cnet ı

 

Pear C ı www

Metod: Emulating EFI from HDD

 

 

RussianMac ı www

Metod: Fill me in here? Probably a HDD EFI of some sort?

 

They also sell netbooks and HP/Compaq laptops with OSX

 

Quo Computers ı www

Metod: HDD Preboot stolen from EFI-X

 

As far as my judgement goes. This as low you can go morally. Not only breaking Eula, but stealing and taking pride in some one else work.

The owner has a retail store, the first Hackintosh retailstore.

 

ı Inside Quo ı

 

EFi-X ı www

Metod: BPU , Preboot by USB with their own EFI

 

Well, ok... this one does not jump in to the clone maker section since it's a USB dongel plugged into any Motherboard with their own coding and hardware engineering.

But it is, even if they don't offcially state this. An OSX enabler.

 

Now that I listed Clonemakers and OSX enablers.. Lets go to my EVIL Idea

 

The Blackshore™ concept & theory..My thingy:

In the latest weeks I found the INTEL DX58SO.

Accourding to many reviews it is as close as a PC mobo gone to a MacPro mobo. Everything except the Ethernet works OOB. Nativly supported.

 

To make a NATIVE SUPPORTED MOTHERBOARD:

•Replace the non-native supported Ethernet adapter to a Realtek 8169 that is nativly supported.

•Replacing the BIOS with a Huge EFI container of somesort. (not knowing the tech)

•Adding in a small SSD or somekind of fast flashbased storage device for a custom linux distro, that system will then after be called ICSH™ OS (InCaseSkitHappens) :rolleyes:

•Adding in ICSH™ Controller, This controller can only be controlled by the costumer service or the user by a software on any other computer. Making the first mobo with real distance support possibilty? This controller has a status that can be given by the user by a physical switch on mobo. IF the user gives permission anyone (especially costumer service) can give a distance support in any OS.. taking full controll..everything except any physical contact ;)

 

 

ICSH™ OS

Containing a small custom webbrowser, a lite but widly supported burning software, backup software,a VNC software with p2p and ip-phone support (similar to the upcoming skype version) for custumer service, hardware health software etc etc.The Costumer supported VNC

 

The EFI container could hold the orginall MAC PRO EFI. That does not violate the Law either right?

When we now have a totally nativly supported mobo, we ofcourse gonna use this for commercial use.. in other words..sell the mobo.

Ofcource we will have two models. One model supporting only one CPU socket and the second supporting two sockets.

 

We will now sell this mobo to the retail as a regular mobo with the slogan similar to:

"Freedom&Support at last"

I see all the pros of this idea compared to other experiance models and the native ones:

• Nativly supporting Leopard/Windows/Linux

• Good motherboard, no fu*king Gigabyte™ {censored} board.

• Apple™ Boot Camp supported.

• ACHI (<--spellning on this?) tables works 100% with apple /win / linux. Sleep function/Start/Shutdown etc. works

ICSH™ , The first mobo? with allover support from factory to scrap and all things between!

• Freedom of choice! The user can use any OS he/she wants!

 

 

YOUR OPINION??!

What do you think about this idea?

Would you like this?

 

How is it regarding lawsuits?

I live in Sweden, as far I know regarding the law here is that you can't file a lawsuite until a law is broken. Since I can't see any laws being broken here..what can happen legally?

 

 

This idea makes me almost dance:

http://open.spotify.com/track/2KYiZSmSpuUtYYPpp7ekxB

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Everyone wants an opinion so I'll offer one on this subject.

 

First, regarding PsyStar, they didn't steal the boot loader, it was netkas who tried to claim the work as his own and even tried to license it as his own, clearly illegal considering the source belongs to apple to begin with.

 

I have yet to see a Pear C installation that boots without issues, partly due to the poor available documentation on installation.

 

Both RussianMac and Quo Computers are using a pre-boot system on HDD, something that would be impossible to prove came from EFI-X since EFI-X is tailored specifically for Gigabyte motherboards, is nothing more than a setup like munky's EFI partition boot loader stuck on a USB flash drive in protected mode and the programmers owned Gigabyte motherboards and they have not had much success making it work on much else because they do not own the hardware and the ninja wanna-be owner is too cheap to fork out the capital because he has little business sense and can't see the advantages of supporting more boards so you can forget claims that they stole EFI-X code to do this.

 

EFI-X was a concept that had great potential however the makers were too greedy and the programmers were faced with the lack of resources to program the environment for other motherboard brands and, even on their supported boards, half the hardware does not work, sound is by USB add-on (I wonder why) and some on-board ethernet are not supported. In the beginning they were claiming it as an OSX only device but to avoid lawsuits they dropped the public statement in favor of a minor disclaimer that "the device can boot Mac OS X" but expecting anyone to believe that the device was created with the intention of anything else is just ludicrous.

 

All that aside, claiming that apple's EULA is law and enforceable in court is another misconception, apple's history of lawsuits is not won on the laws broken but on the money that lines their deep pockets and the tactics used to win a suit, they list 100 potential violation in the suit, as they see which ones are founded or have some merit they drop others reducing the count so that they only have to win more than half of the stipulated claims to win the suit and of those remaining they may not even be relevant to the original claims.

 

PsyStar is a good example, the lost their financial backing due to the high costs of suit so they must bow out of the public lime light but don't think for a minute that apple won the suite, all they did was make PsyStar waste a consider amount of money defending themselves until it exhausted the available funds and apple didn't bring a suit for breaking the EULA because they know as most attorney's do, it's not worth the paper it's written on. All apple did was force PsyStar into bankruptcy, they did not want this in court to play out with the potential of publicly recording that the EULA has no weight in court.

 

 

Apple sued and lost a lawsuit to a canadian company called Peach MicroSystems who made the first legal apple clone, a US company, Franklin Computers was quick to jump on the band wagon however, when threatened with a lawsuit they negotiated a licensing agreement with apple which apple never renewed so Franklin couldn't continue in their clone war and because it was licensed Franklin couldn't continue selling the computers.

 

Now your idea, is this to benefit the x86 community??

 

I know of two individuals who attempted to generate a compatible motherboard and one of these boards natively boots the Mac OS X install media without any assistance.

 

The issue is the cost that must go out first are high, the engineering costs are in the 6 figures unless you find an ODM who has something current that is EOP and really close and only requires some minor modifications (plausible) and will do it for a smaller fee but usually for a one-off (limited quantity - one time run).

 

Then you have to find people willing to spend the money to buy the board, while the community has many users most are cheap and don't want to fork out $200.00 to buy a decent working motherboard when they can buy a $60.00 motherboard and try to make it work with some success but even most of those users are to dumb to actually make a proper solution or even know anything about the hardware they have other than the bragging rights of claiming to own a "MacPro" clone.

 

And don't mistake anything i7 or ICH10R as close to MacPro or anything Mac, the nehalem name is used for other processors and they are a different breed.

 

While you quietly say "yes" people would spend the $200.00 to get this motherboard, you must purchase a minimum of 10,000 as an OEM (500 if you can use an existing ODM EOP product and do it as a one-off) and you have to pay for these up front and your cost per is probably around $150.00, great when you say you can make $50.00 per board but are your pockets deep enough to fund this venture now or know someone willing to foot the bill in the hopes of getting a large portion of the profit?

 

Also accept the fact that these users will not flock to buy your board when it becomes available, yes you will get a small rush of purchaser but for the most part it will take a long time to sell and recover your funds.

 

This is a good reason why you don't see many new computer companies popping up and I'm not talking about computer stores I'm talking about manufacturers like Dell, HP, Gateway and Toshiba.

 

There is the potential to do something out there but if you don't have the financial backing in place then chances are it will go no where and expecting financial support from the community is a poor business decision.

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Everyone wants an opinion so I'll offer one on this subject.

 

First, regarding PsyStar, they didn't steal the boot loader, it was netkas who tried to claim the work as his own and even tried to license it as his own, clearly illegal considering the source belongs to apple to begin with.

So you are saying that netkas didn't have anything to do with the boot loader for Psystar?

 

I have yet to see a Pear C installation that boots without issues, partly due to the poor available documentation on installation.

And how was this contributing to this tread?

 

 

Both RussianMac and Quo Computers are using a pre-boot system on HDD, something that would be impossible to prove came from EFI-X since EFI-X is tailored specifically for Gigabyte motherboards, is nothing more than a setup like munky's EFI partition boot loader stuck on a USB flash drive in protected mode and the programmers owned Gigabyte motherboards and they have not had much success making it work on much else because they do not own the hardware and the ninja wanna-be owner is too cheap to fork out the capital because he has little business sense and can't see the advantages of supporting more boards so you can forget claims that they stole EFI-X code to do this.

 

EFI-X was a concept that had great potential however the makers were too greedy and the programmers were faced with the lack of resources to program the environment for other motherboard brands and, even on their supported boards, half the hardware does not work, sound is by USB add-on (I wonder why) and some on-board ethernet are not supported. In the beginning they were claiming it as an OSX only device but to avoid lawsuits they dropped the public statement in favor of a minor disclaimer that "the device can boot Mac OS X" but expecting anyone to believe that the device was created with the intention of anything else is just ludicrous.

Actually Creater of Quo already stated that he did use EFi-X bootloader.

Quo have some agreement with EFi-X right now. I don't exactly now what the status is but. I they have come to some kind of understanding as I understand from the EFi-X forums.

 

No, EFi-X can be used with any USB motherboard as an EFI/bootloader.

They however will not give support for the motherboards outside the HLC.

Right now they have Gigabyte and DFI. Intel is cooming.

Several people are running Asus and Intel boards on that forum.

EFi-X is more than a bootloader. It has a CPU,RAM,Storage device of somesort, drivers and EFI bootloader amongs other stuff. They call it a BPU, this BPU can override some of the Bios settings aswell.

 

Ofcourse they have to tangle around the bloody lawsuit mess.

It's not about being a coward..its about making a product to a market that excists and trying to keep it on the market as long as possible. Besides, a EFi-X costumer likes to build their own riggs as they please. You don't have that freedom on a regular mac.

 

I am a EFi-X user and they had problems with the Ethernet drivers but they also gave out a temporary solution for it under the meantime. But ok, it took abouth 6 months to fix the Ethernet issue.

Some graphiccards do not work as they should do for the moment being. the 9800 for example not Mirror correctly as I understand. Driver writers needs to improve themself at EFi-X BIG flaw there.

 

All that aside, claiming that apple's EULA is law and enforceable in court is another misconception, apple's history of lawsuits is not won on the laws broken but on the money that lines their deep pockets and the tactics used to win a suit, they list 100 potential violation in the suit, as they see which ones are founded or have some merit they drop others reducing the count so that they only have to win more than half of the stipulated claims to win the suit and of those remaining they may not even be relevant to the original claims.

 

PsyStar is a good example, the lost their financial backing due to the high costs of suit so they must bow out of the public lime light but don't think for a minute that apple won the suite, all they did was make PsyStar waste a consider amount of money defending themselves until it exhausted the available funds and apple didn't bring a suit for breaking the EULA because they know as most attorney's do, it's not worth the paper it's written on. All apple did was force PsyStar into bankruptcy, they did not want this in court to play out with the potential of publicly recording that the EULA has no weight in court.

 

Apple sued and lost a lawsuit to a canadian company called Peach MicroSystems who made the first legal apple clone, a US company, Franklin Computers was quick to jump on the band wagon however, when threatened with a lawsuit they negotiated a licensing agreement with apple which apple never renewed so Franklin couldn't continue in their clone war and because it was licensed Franklin couldn't continue selling the computers.

 

Then the battle is on! :P

I live in Sweden and American law do not apply here.

I have checked with my lawer friend and regarding the licens/eula issue I could get suid.

BUT the court is not the same ballgame here as it is the states.

So in order to get suid they have to bring my ass to America before I can get suid bacause of a reason as lack of money to defend myself.

I can still be suid for breaking the EULA. Which is bad ofcourse.

BUT if I do as EFi-X, Let the comsumer break the EULA.

Then the lawsuit can not be turned to me but the consumer!

The consumer will not give a rats as since it will not that much of a diffrence to him.

 

I also got an update from my lawer friend recently.

Apperently I can do what the hell I want with my software as long as I do not reproduce my bought the copy.

Even re sell it.

So in Sweden, there will be no stopping me! ;)

 

Now your idea, is this to benefit the x86 community??

 

I know of two individuals who attempted to generate a compatible motherboard and one of these boards natively boots the Mac OS X install media without any assistance.

 

The issue is the cost that must go out first are high, the engineering costs are in the 6 figures unless you find an ODM who has something current that is EOP and really close and only requires some minor modifications (plausible) and will do it for a smaller fee but usually for a one-off (limited quantity - one time run).

 

Then you have to find people willing to spend the money to buy the board, while the community has many users most are cheap and don't want to fork out $200.00 to buy a decent working motherboard when they can buy a $60.00 motherboard and try to make it work with some success but even most of those users are to dumb to actually make a proper solution or even know anything about the hardware they have other than the bragging rights of claiming to own a "MacPro" clone.

 

And don't mistake anything i7 or ICH10R as close to MacPro or anything Mac, the nehalem name is used for other processors and they are a different breed.

 

While you quietly say "yes" people would spend the $200.00 to get this motherboard, you must purchase a minimum of 10,000 as an OEM (500 if you can use an existing ODM EOP product and do it as a one-off) and you have to pay for these up front and your cost per is probably around $150.00, great when you say you can make $50.00 per board but are your pockets deep enough to fund this venture now or know someone willing to foot the bill in the hopes of getting a large portion of the profit?

 

Also accept the fact that these users will not flock to buy your board when it becomes available, yes you will get a small rush of purchaser but for the most part it will take a long time to sell and recover your funds.

 

This is a good reason why you don't see many new computer companies popping up and I'm not talking about computer stores I'm talking about manufacturers like Dell, HP, Gateway and Toshiba.

 

There is the potential to do something out there but if you don't have the financial backing in place then chances are it will go no where and expecting financial support from the community is a poor business decision.

 

Don't you worry about the money!

I got people for that! BUT I might need some more research before a motherboard is produced.

 

Thanks!

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