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.

Comments

So . .

[SanLouBlues]

They're throwing away his donated code then right?

Re:So . .

[Kintanon]

It's in the part that has to do with having no rights as a minor who is under the protection of ones parents. Normally his parents could sign the contract with him and they would be bound to and if he broke it they would be responsible... So I dunno why they haven't pursued that avenue.

Kintanon

What about EULAs?

[Foulman]

Not bound to fine print eh.. does that mean he could do whatever he wanted with purchased software, ignoring EULAs since he's not bound?! perfect! reverse engineering and hacking for everybody!

Re:What about EULAs?

[ChaosDiscordSimple]

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.

The claim that you have no rights to use software if you don't agree to the EULA is still being debated and has not been well tested in court. I certainly don't need any sort of EULA for other copyright protected works I purchase (music on tape, record, or CD; books; magazines; movies on videotape or DVD; console video games; arcade games; sheet music; etc). Copyright only restricts the right to make and distribute copies. Personal use (including copies for personal use) has never required any sort license agreement. The claim that installation or copying into RAM to run software represents some sort of restricted copying is as silly as claiming that making a tape copy of a CD to listen to in the car is restricted. So why is computer software somehow different?

Don't buy into the software industries claim that you have no rights to a product you purchase. It's on shaky legal ground and they know it. There is no reason for citizens to let them extend copyright in this new way without a fight.

Re:What about EULAs?

[ewhac]

The EULA is the only thing that grants him any rights to use the software; [ ... ]

Absolute horsesh*t.

EULAs are a legal fiction and have no force or validity whatsoever.

The fictitious need for a "license" at all stems from an impossibly boneheaded court decision made in the 1970's which stated that the act of loading the software into memory for the purposes of execution constituted an infringing copy (the copy just made from disk to RAM), and was not covered under Fair Use. Ergo, a license was required.

The merest child could see how stupid this ruling was. Eventually, Congress got around to amending copyright law to expressly allow loading a program into RAM. So the highly specious need for a "license" from the vendor no longer exists. Like books, music, and videos, software is sold.

However, this idiot ruling from the court (which still serves as a crucial reference in the history of IP case law) serves as a jumping-off point to illustrate the unsustainability of the existing copyright regime in the light of modern digital media: Congress expressly gave you the right to make a copy in RAM. But what about that copy on your hard disk, which you copied from the CD-ROM you bought? If you've got enough system RAM, there's probably a complete copy of the work in the filesystem cache. Is that allowed? How about the copy in the read cache of your disk drive and/or disk controller itself? What about those fragments sitting in the L2 cache of the CPU, or those even tinier fragments in the L1 cache?

"Licensing" is not a reasonable or workable model. Copyright law needs to be fundamentally reengineered to live in the modern world.

Schwab

Child labor too, perhaps?

[fgodfrey]

Apple probably has more to think about here than just "can this guy be held to the click-wrap license". There are laws in various states regulating labor for people under the age of 18. I know I had "fun" with this when I worked paid theater shows in high school. Since Apple is going to take this and sell it, couldn't his work be considered "child labor"?

This sounds like such a boneheaded descision, though, that it must have come from their legal department.

Re:Child labor too, perhaps?

[fgodfrey]

Well, while it is blatently obvious to you and I that hobbyist programming is not labor, it may not be so obvious to a judge when presented as "Apple is now shipping a product on which they are trying to make a profit that includes code that was written for Apple by a 15 year old". I can definetly see someone interpreting that as "labor". Also, I believe that Apple could still get in trouble even if both the kid and his parents agreed that it was not labor.

The building model planes part doesn't apply unless you plan on selling them for profit after they are built and don't conform to the laws on number of hours worked at certain times, etc.

Sorry folks, it's the law.

[purduephotog]

Now with most laws, he could get his parents to sign the contract releasing such problems, but, he obviously violated the TOS. The government has said that anyone under 18 can't make decisions for themselves, and must have parental consent. Get that consent, problem solved.

Don't go ragging on Apple for this - if they weren't taking these steps, I'm sure a case could be made for child labour law violations.

Co-signer for NDA?

[kdgarris]

Couldn't a parent or guardian co-sign the NDa agreement to make it legally valid?

-Karl

Does this mean the same for all EULA

[Dutchmaan]

It seems that this could set quite a precedent for a lot of kiddies to abuse any EULA for almost anything.

What a great time to be under 18... no restrictions on your software usage, it would be unenforceable!

Re:Gotta love contract law

[Ranger Rick]

But he had already had a contract with another part of Apple for earlier development, with his parents co-signing, and Apple was fine with it. They seem to be deliberately screwing him rather than making arrangements like before (and screwing themselves... Finlay's a force to be reckoned with, he's put a lot of effort into OSX).

Re:Parents or something

[JabberWokky]

In Florida, it just requires you to take your kid to the court house and sign some forms.

Specifically, it can even be used (in Florida) to only apply to a particular contract, a copy of which is included with the forms. It came up when we were fighting the curfew laws here (my little brother, who is a US citizen, was the first person in North Palm Beach to get hit with them - the judge threw out the case, calling the law "ridiculous". Gotta love the three branch system).

--
Evan

I've experienced both sides....

[flxkid]

I started developing when I was 9 yrs old. Because of California law, I wasn't able to actually get paid for my work until I was 14. At the time I was working as a developer for my Great Uncle's insurance agency doing corporate database development.

This corporation is run by the books, so basically they told me I could do what I wanted, but that they wouldn't be able to pay me for my work until I turned 14.

I've also been an active member of the development community for the product that I develop with (www.dataaccess.com). I have given many speeches, even submitted source that was incorporated into the language, all while under the age of 18. Now of course I have no problems, I'm almost 21.

But I've also used this whole 'under 18 no contract' thing to my advantage. It came in handy when dealing with a warranty contract on some equipment I purchased. I shouldn't have even been able to purchase a warranty, but they let me. Later when the product broke, I took it back and they told me that the contract stated that I had to send it in for repair, not bring it in for replacement. After pointing out to him that I was under 18 and he could get in trouble for even selling me a warranty, they promptly accepted the broken product and handed me a nice new box.

So I used it for a threat. So what, all the same ;) Anyways, I see both sides of this story. I feel that I was being shafted while under 18, but I also used it to my advantage.

In the long run, I would hope that something would come along to patch up this hole in contract law.

I think in California that maybe this has been dealt with. I was able to open a bank account and even have a VISA before I was 18 because my father signed as a proxy on the contract. (He couldn't though access the money in the account, he was not a signor on account, just a contract proxy)

OLIVER

But he could be tried as an adult........

[FXSTD]

You are under 18, you can
Get married - May need parental consent in some places
Be a father/mother -Greatest responsibility ever... (pay child support for 18+ years...even if you are married)
Decide to end your child/fetus' life (don't get started on the pro/anti abortion thing ok)
Wield the greatest weapon ever created (cars have killed more ppl than guns and bombs ever did)
Serve life in prison for crimes
Pay taxes
Work at a burger shop (does this mean you may get fired because they cannot enforce the confidentiality agreement that keeps thousands of minors from giving up the ingredients to "secret sauce"

List goes on.

But you can't contribute in a meaningful way to anything meaningful that has to do with lawyers.

By the way, the next shrink wrap EULA is getting opened by my 9 year old son......

Ageism and Forced Lying

[This Is Ridiculous]

I'm a sixteen year old Perl and C hacker. I have commit priviages on Parrot, and I've written at least five or ten source files and touched at least half of the files in the distribution.

And I have to lie to do much of anything online.

Within the OS community, I'm completely open with my age. Nobody cares about age--just skills. It's absolutely wonderful. The only other place I get that is in college classes.

But on the rest of the Internet I have to lie. I have to lie to get an instant messaging account, a webmail address, access to a news site, some web space, or a chat room. I have to lie to get API data from Palm, Microsoft and many other companies. Some of these places make it exceedingly easy to lie--for example, one videochat site just has you hit the submit button again, implicitly promising that a parent is submitting th eform this time. In others, you have to jump through hoops to do it. But in most cases it's pretty easy to lie.

It gets on my conscience, though. Every time I lie I feel like a cheat. Every time I pretend I didn't see the "by clicking this button, you agree that you are over eighteen" line, I feel like a bad person. But I do it anyway, because I can't do what I want and need to do otherwise.

I understand that this is necessary because of contract law. However, I think that points to a deficiency in contract law, not in kids.

I haven't thought very long on this issue, but at least one solution comes to mind. It follows the model of child labor laws. Before fifteen (which, incidentally, I think is older than is really necessary) you simply can't work. Between fifteen and eighteen you can work, but with restrictions on what you can do and how long you can do it for. At eighteen, you're free to sell your labor in any way you please.

Perhaps similar provisions should be written into contract law. For example, between age X and eighteen, you can enter contracts unless they obligate you to pay money or do work.

In any case, I believe that the current system is Evil and Wrong. We should fix it instead fo forcing kids to be liars.

Wow. Talk about your cutting-edge journalism.

[softsign]

So, 3 hours after you posted the story, after ~600 /.-ers have sounded off against Apple, after a few other stories to grab attention have piled up, and at the end of the business day you finally realize that maybe you should occasionally do some research.

The reason? It turns out this kid's rant against Apple was missing one important detail... The one where we learn he was being provided developer access by someone who was violating a legally binding agreement. Maybe that's why Apple went all heavy-handed and cut off this developer's account? Oops.

I feel sorry for the kid if he wants to hack Darwin and Apple won't let him contribute his code back. I don't feel sorry for the kid (or his co-conspirators) for doing an end-run around Apple's contracts and getting burned. Welcome to the real world - you better get used to it.

Re:I encountered this as well

[Aapje]

I agree. AFAIK this should be sufficient. I've just submitted this to Apple's feedback page for OS X:

It has come to my attention that you have disallowed Finlay Dobbie the rights normally associated with the status of Darwin Committer and have later disabled his ADC-account, where these decisions were both based on his age. I am dismayed that you disallow this talented young programmer to work on Darwin. We should applaud and encourage this form of community service that benefits hundreds of thousands of your customers. His work has helped to fix a nasty bug that could lock up MacOS X for minutes. He has also added new functionality to the official Darwin distribution. I believe that his contributions and ability to carry responsibility should be judged based on his performance.

I understand that you may be worried about the legal implications of working with minors. However, the laws that protect minors were never intended to keep minors from learning, contributing to society or taking responsibility. They do give parents the responsibility to monitor and (if necessary) steer their children. We cannot monitor and steer our children if they have insufficient freedom to make their own decisions. A proper education of our children depends on their ability to take responsibility. I urge you to contact the parents of Finlay Dobbie and ask them to sign the contracts that are necessary for someone to contribute to Darwin. This should be sufficient to guarantee that your contracts with Finlay Dobbie are legally binding and you can stop any violation of the contract under the authority of law.

As your customer, I have always known Apple to be a company that tries to act ethically. This includes your policy of Equal Employment Opportunity that disallows your employees to discriminate "on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity characteristics or expression, disability, medical condition, U.S. Military or veteran status in recruiting, hiring, training and promoting." I hope and trust that you will not limit this policy to your employees, but will apply it to your contacts with volunteers that contribute to your products as well. I hope you will soon correct this error and make me a proud Mac-user once again.