~pcwiz Posted September 12, 2007 Share Posted September 12, 2007 Hi, I am planning to create a page and locally host all the OSx86 Hardware Drivers on my website. Is uploading OSx86 hardware drivers and allowing people to download them illegal? I'm pretty sure its not copyright violation because Apple didn't make the drivers. Is it illegal? thanx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Nonny Moose Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 Chances are... if you think it's illegal, it probably is. In this case, by posting the hardware drivers to enable illegal copyright infringement, you're most likely breaking the law. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeSuKuN Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 well, unless they are apple's official drivers modified (as AppleHDA or AppleAzalia with edited vendor-id) they are probably legal, unofficial drivers exists since before osx86 was even a thought, they provided support to pc GPUs and peripherals that weren't mac-ready. so, as long as the device exists as an expansion card or peripheral (any device built in the motherboard isn't valid if no expansion card or peripheral version exists logically) it should be completely legal. Also, I don't know US laws, but here, reverse engineering is legal if it's for compatibility/coexistence purposes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mifki Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 All drivers for OS X (the intel version) that come with OS X are copyrighted by apple, 3rd party drivers made by other vendors most likely have a re-distribution clause as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeSuKuN Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 that's what I wanted to state. You can only host the drivers if it's license allows it AND they aren't used to circumvent any OSX protection. (IE virtual TPM driver) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anonymous86 Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 What's with all this "is it legal" bullsh*t these days? First off: That depends on the legislature if YOUR country. If you're american, your SOOL -thanks to your dumbass "copyright" laws. Here in Austria, there's nothing to fear, though, since we don't have anything like a DMCA, we don't even have a Copyright - it's called "Urheberrecht" (literally " The right of the one who made it first"), but it does *not* forbit derivative works. So there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted September 13, 2007 Author Share Posted September 13, 2007 I'm gonna go ahead with the idea. A driver repository where you can download drivers for your hardware! Coming soon on www.######.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted September 14, 2007 Author Share Posted September 14, 2007 Actually I had second thoughts and decided to drop the idea. If people want drivers, they can get them right here at InsanelyMac and its way to hard to keep up with all the new drivers that are being added. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyntax Posted September 14, 2007 Share Posted September 14, 2007 To be honest I was having the same idea, it was more going to be like a client program that looks in the system profile gets the vendor and device ID's of the hardware and uploads this to a server which packages the drivers in an installation package. Sort OSX update program. Question of legality, well it's all immatrial anyway since OSX86 isn't a legally licensed OS!! :lol: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted September 14, 2007 Author Share Posted September 14, 2007 Gee, that idea sort of seems impossible..Automatically packaging the correct drivers. Wow..if a programmer pulled that off it would be amazing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Nonny Moose Posted September 15, 2007 Share Posted September 15, 2007 It shouldn't be super hard if the system profile can be read by the installer. Hard, yes, but not super hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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