Apple Fires Five Employees for Downloading Leopard

BuzzardsBay writes "The good folks at VARBusiness are quoting a ThinkSecret report that claims five Apple employees got canned over the unauthorized downloading of the Leopard OS. According to the article: one of the employees says: "Because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated. If we all lied and denied it would we still be working at Apple today? Even more so, is that the kind of person that Apple wants working for them?""

Comments

Re:Is that the kind of person apple wants?

[Scudsucker]

As to Apple, the whole company has been turning into shit since introducing CD keys for home OSX installs 2 years ago.

Eh? I never had to use a cd key for any of my Tiger installs. Methinks you are talking about Server, not client.

Re:Is that the kind of person apple wants?

[Analog Penguin]

Confusion at best, FUD at worst. OS X has never required CD keys for home installation. The "Family Pack", which lets you install on up to five machines, has no CD keys, either. Apple has traditionally taken a "give the consumer the benefit of the doubt" view of their OS. There are no technical barriers preventing you from buying one copy of Tiger and installing it on a hundred machines, but Apple trusts you not to do so

As was mentioned above, however, OS X Server does require CD keys for installation.

Re:The consequences were that you got fired..

[MaestroRC]

We all know Apple is incredibly protective of their IP. Part of that IP is keeping everyone from just being able to get a copy of what they have in development, so as to keep some things closed and hidden until *they* want to talk about it.

Note: I AM an Apple employee, and I would expect that if I did the same, I would face the same punishment. Apple's new hire training actually goes over all of this, and states exactly the punishment for doing anything against their policy. Part of that policy is that if you use or divulge unreleased software or information without the proper authority, you *will* be fired, at the least. I'm sure if they wanted to, they could have taken this much further.

Think here for a minute, these guys downloaded an illicit copy of Leopard, knowing that just that was grounds for being fired, *and then* proceded to talk about it at work, where they were overheard. Surprising to me would be if they *didn't* get canned.