Slashdot Mirror
OSx86 Shutdown Rumors Explained
n.e.watson writes "The AP has run an article that addresses recent rumors on the internet about Apple Legal shutting down the OSx86 Project, with a statement from an OSx86 administrator. From the article: 'The OSx86 Project Web site stated Apple had served it with a notice on Thursday citing violations of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the site was reviewing all of its discussion forum postings as a result. The site has always aimed to adhere to copyright laws and is working with Apple to ensure no violations exist, according to a statement by the site administrator.'"
Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands. Plenty of options there, starting at about $1.25 euro if you don't need a server to host large files on (=pay extra for bandwidth).
Good god, these "I deserve to run OS X any way I like" arguments are tiresome. Go do something to make OSS better if you want to tinker. Or hack OS X to run on whatever you want, and then keep it to your damn self and enjoy it! Just for god's sake don't bring up that Apple I motherboards were made in a garage or that Woz futzed around with long distance calls more than 30 years ago - 30 years ago! - as reasons Apple should "chill out" about people using their software in ways they don't like.
I have had this discussion with half a dozen people who are looking forward to being able to use OS.X on their low-end noname PC boxes and laptops with all the stability that it would run on a Mac. Running OS.X on regular PC systems will be possilbe, but it is also going to degenerate into a war between the Apple team working on the locking scheme and whatever crackers there are trying to make OS.X work on their PC boxes. Even if the crackers succeed keeping the OS running most of the time, OS.X on non Apple hardware will never be all that stable, I know that from experience having seen cracked OS.X installations in action (and this on a high end PC laptop, not some cheap-ass noname crapware). Furthermore even if you can run OS.X on your cheapo PC system you will not be able to patch it without worrying about your computer not booting because Apple has shipped a new counter patch to the latest hack with it's newest patch cluster. Basically you would be better off using Linux, yes you will still have to spend a few hours recompiling your kernel and tweaking drivers to get your WIFI to work and you will always have minor issues but at least you won't have to worry about your computer not booting after installing a patch cluster. I would trust my data to Linux long before I would entrust it to a hacked OS.X version running on a Dell laptop.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Franklin and Columbia did the wrong thing but Compaq did a white room reverse-engineering of the BIOS. This is all the OSx86 project is doing too.
No they aren't, you idiot. The IBM PC BIOS was examined and its specs were written up by a team of engineers. Those specs were then given to a second team of engineers who were very carefully selected for their lack of exposure to the IBM BIOS ("virgins", in industry parlance), so IBM would be unable to claim that their work was tainted by that. The second team was them tasked with developing a BIOS that behaved just like the genuine IBM BIOS according to the specifications the first team divined from it, but without ever being in the same room as the genuine article.
THAT is how legally-defensible reverse-engineering works, or at least did back then. The guys cracking OS X so it runs on generic PCs are just patching Apple's code to fool/circumvent the checks it does to make sure it's running on genuine Apple hardware. That's not even close to legitimate reverse-engineering. I don't even think they'll be able to hide behind the "interoperability" provisions of the DMCA that allow some limited reverse-engineering.
Oh, by the way, a Mac can be bought for $500 that will use your existing display and (USB) keyboard-- it always cracks me up when you guys try to prop up your anti-Apple arguments by bitching about the price of their top-of-the-line hardware while conveniently ignoring their low-end machines.
~Philly
I've seen quite a few posts on this but here are few links in particular that I found to be good. I will finish up by saying that Apple cannot win this battle. The x86 market is far too large for people not to tinker.
1. OSX 10.4.4 Works on AMD and SSE2 CPUs Check out the "related posts" entries for more info.
2. After OSX86 Project recieved it's DMCA shut down notice, people are moving discussion to the OSX86 China Forums
3. For immediate questions, IRC Channel is availabe.
4. To search old posts go to the 360 Online Forums
5. 10.4.4 restore disc has already been released on bittorrent
Have any of the 100's of people replying to this actually bothered to visit www.osx86project.org and look for themselves to find out what's been going on? Doesn't bloody seem like it. The Washington Post article was hopelessly wrong and inflammatory, and n.e.watson is a jerk for not checking it out either before making himself look like a complete ass!
At no time during all of this was the OSX86 Project shutdown, nor was there any chance it was going to. It was THE FORUM only. And only for as long as it took the moderators long enough to find and remove the links to "patches" that violated the DMCA and got Apple's attention.
I guess some people don't want to know the truth. Too busy lathering at the mouth over how some big bad corporation has stomped over the little guy. When in this case it didn't.
Donno what Apples net profit is, but I'm getting 70 cents a pop for a 99 cent song. And I'm signed up through Tune Core, so it's not like I'm some RIAA shill. 99 - 70 = 29 cents to cover the rest of the bills.
"Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox