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Apple Cuts Off Under-18 Darwin Developer
Crispyking writes "Finlay Dobbie has been a leading contributor to the Darwin project, most notably
helping track down the infamous PPP-hang bug. He's been nominated to become a Darwin contributor (which comes with limited check-in privileges) but when going through the process, Apple found out he's under 18 years old, and not only refused to let him be a contributor to this 'open source' project, but canceled his
Apple Developer Connection membership (which gives him download access to the source code) on the grounds that because he's under 18, he can't be legally bound to the small-print agreement." Update: 03/26 00:26 GMT by P : Finlay wrote in email that he wasn't getting the Darwin source through his ADC account, but through a third party development project, which he resigned from as a result of all the red tape and the ADC account being disabled.
Apple is technically within their rights here, and it's even (arguably) a good idea. It's a shame that he can't contribute, but Apple needs to protect themselves from liability. Of course, they could accept his contributions via a proxy, I believe, and thus allow him his contributions. Still, it's a shame that we have to do this nowadays...
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This sucks for the kid - but I can understand where Apple is coming from. Being a minor, NO contract he agrees to is valid - he could do anything he wanted to with whatever information he gets from Apple.
I understand the minor concept, and where it came from, but maybe this hard and fast rule needs to be reevaluated. But what would the criteria be?
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
(I wrote this at http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/)
Finlay Dobbie published an article about how Apple effectively does not allow minors-- folks under 18-- to participate in the Apple Developer Program or contribute changes to the Darwin project.
Unfortunately, Apple's policy is a reflection of the legal status of minors within the US. The policy is largely out of Apple's control!
The problem stems from the whole COPA/COPPA [Children's Online Protection Act which morphed into Children's Online Privacy Protection Act or something like that] related set of laws.
I actually have a bunch of pertinent technical experience related to COPA/COPPA in that CodeFab built much of the back end engine used by the www.noggin.com site including the editorial tools used to manage content produced by minors.
Basically, if you are under 18, you are deemed a minor and you do not have the legal authority to sign contracts, cannot publish or contribute content that falls under another party's copyright/ownership, and are otherwise severely restricted in a legal fashion.
In other words, Apple cannot directly allow you to participate either as a Darwin contributor or as an ADC member because there is no legal way for you to effectively 'sign' the contracts required to be a member.
While Apple could extend the program such that your parents or legal guardians could give permission for your participation-- effectively signing for you-- that would not actually be enough for you to participate in the programs. In particular, for content produced by a minor to be published in a forum visible to others, several criteria must be met:
Parental consent must be obtained at least once.
Every piece of content must be reviewed prior to being made available within a forum outside of the company that effectively 'owns' the content (in this case, Apple).
If the parent's ever rescind the permission to use content, it must be possible to effectively "unpublish" the content. Imagine the implications within a CVS repository of, say, having to remove the changes in version 1.5 of a file that is now at revision 1.24...?
When a piece of content produced by a minor is actually published, it must be published in a fashion that effectively hides the identity of the source. This part is fairly fuzzy in that it is hard to hide identity when a username is the user's actual name... but the law was not exactly created by folks totally familiar with technology.
The bottom line is that Apple's -- and other companies -- hands are tied in this. They would have to put forth a tremendous amount of effort to make it possible for minors to participate. Even then, a minor could not participate in the full fashion and there is still implied liability.
If you are in this position, your best bet is to have a parent/guardian sign up for the ADC account. As far as Darwin contributions are concerned, it will likely have to be done through some other resource who is of majority age.
No. The EULA is the only thing that grants him any rights to use the software; if it's invalidated by his age, he has no rights regarding it except, perhaps, to sell it under the first-sale doctrine.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
There should be exceptions to this rule. Their 18-year old rule makes business sense, BUT, think for a moment, that even Marcelo who is the MAIN maintainer for the 2.4.x stable Linux kernel is BARELY 18 years old and he started working as a coder to Connectiva Linux since he was 13 years old.
And yes, I know someone who wrote his own operating system at his 16 years old, and he had his own company at 18.
Apple should just make an exception this time for people like Finlay Dobbie, if he is indeed a good coder.
The problem is, if they ever had to enforce the terms a minor almost always has the right to "disaffirm" the contract. A contract entered into with a minor can give you a framework of the agreement, and the adult party is bound to it--but the minor may simply disaffirm the contract on the basis that he is a minor.
Hmm, I wonder what the implications of this are for a minor buying--ahem, licensing a Microsoft product. Since they are minors they can disaffirm the "contract" entirely... Perhaps I'll have to have kids buy my software in the future for me. :grin:
I am a lawyer, but what I'm about to say is not legal advice. I would need to look at specific statutes and case law to come up with a specific answer -- this is just off the top of my head.
In most states, a contract entered into by a minor is voidable by the minor, rather than void. That means that the minor can (before reaching the age of majority, I believe) decide to declare the contract void, and then it is as if the contract had never been entered into. This doesn't apply to certain contracts, such as purchases of "necessaries".
So, without having looked at how this may have been applied with respect to licenses, my guess would be that a minor could declare a EULA that has been agreed to as "void". But what does that get you? Using the software without a license would likely constitute copyright infringement, and being a minor doesn't help you there. No EULA means no license, so use of the software may be off limits.
Remember, the EULA is not required to make it illegal to make copies of software for friends -- copyright does that all by itself. The only reasonable purposes for EULAs that I've ever heard of are warranty disclaimers, limitation of liability, and no-reverse-engineering clauses. Copyright law gives the publisher everything else they need.
Of course, if anyone has any idea what the actual case law is with regard to minors and EULAs, they should pipe up, as I may very well be wrong. (Have I covered myself enough?)
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
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B******t. Apple has released lots of their own code. Just off the top of my head there's CoreFoundation, OpenPlay, Darwin Streaming Server, NetInfo, and their Objective-C runtime. They also actively contribute to projects like apache and gcc. Yes, they're a corporation, and yes, they're trying to make money. That does not mean their interests are automatically opposed to yours.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I encountered this as well when working on Final Doom, a community doom add-on purchased and distributed by id Software. I was a leading contributor to the project, but was 15 at the time of the sale.
The solution was for my parents to sign the agreement with me as well. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know why this was acceptable to id, but perhaps something like this would work for Apple as well, in this case?