Please tell me why the First Sale doctrine should apply to books but not to computer software.
The first sale doctrine applies to both, you're just misunderstanding it. It applies to the original copy, not subsequent copies of a work like the copy you make on your computer's hard drive. To make that copy you need a license or you're probably infringing someone's copyright. The copyright holder can include a whole lot of things in exchange for you getting the right to copy the work from the disk.
"You misunderstand. The EULA is a copyright license."
You misunderstand. The EULA is a one-sided contract. There is no negotiation, there is no signature from both parties. There is only "You follow this or else"
..or else you don't make copies. This is the same bargain offered by the GPL. That's the other side to it. You follow this and in exchange you can make copies of the copyrighted work. If you don't want to follow this license, you don't have to, but you can't make copies. Users are free to negotiate a different deal with Apple, this is just a standard one they offer to everyone.
Psystar needs to get a change of venue to California and just nullify the EULA.
Pystar is unlikely to win in such a way, but I'm sure they'll appreciate your free legal advice.
Or maybe they just need to hire me - getting EA's EULA removed and modified was pretty damned easy, I'd be more than happy to put the squeeze on Apple as well.
Good luck with that. I don't see it making any real difference in the long run. Apple has lots of other ways to tie their OS and hardware, including DRM, so Pystar has no long term business plan. The best they can hope for is to win, get a settlement, set a good precedent, and then find another business when Apple implements DRM or some other method that will cause mild inconvenience to end users but keep OS X tied to Apple hardware.
If I buy a book, I can legally do whatever I want with it. Read it, shred it, use it for toilet paper. If I then choose to sell the remains of the book, That I can also do this legally...just so long as I do not copy it (copyright infringement).
Yes.
If I buy a legal boxed copy OS X, then I should have the same rights to do as I please..
Yes you do. You can read the DVD, shred it, or use it for toilet paper and sell the scraps.
...which includes installing it on my own hardware regardless of it been an Apple branded box or not.
How do you figure? Can you legally install your book on a computer as part of a for profit venture where you modify the book then sell the computer? What you're missing is that the process of installing the OS includes making copies of it. The courts have ruled you need a license to install software because of that fact. This is partly ameliorated by the fact that fair use rights apply differently if you need to make a copy in order to use copyrighted work for its primary purpose. That said, you can't just ignore that copyright law restricts your ability to copy both books and software by pretending installing software does not make a copy of it. Rather we need to reform copyright law to make such copying legal.
What Psystar is doing here is the equivalent of copying the book, slapping on a different cover, and selling it for profit.
No... it's the equivalent of buying a book, slapping on a different cover, and selling it for profit.
If that were the case, Apple would have nothing to sue over. That is not the case. To keep the analogy working it would have to be:
buying a book, scanning the book and uploading it to an ebook reader, editing the cover and changing some things, then selling the ebook reader with the book on it. The case is further muddled by the fact that they do have a license to make a copy to an ebook reader, just not that ebook reader.
While a lot of us feel that should be legal, a lot of us feel a lot of things should be legal under copyright law that do not currently seem to be.
No, they're being paid for the copy on the DVD they sell. They're not being paid for each copy you make in RAM or onto the hard disk.
I don't think Apple has a right to say what piece of hardware you can run OS X on. It's paid for, end of story.
Ethically, I tend to agree with you. Legally, that's not the way copyright law is written and it needs to be reformed in many, many ways before it is sensible.
When everyone else tries to lock stuff down we scream about how evil and greedy they are.
You mean like when Linux locks down his kernel with the GPL forcing people to adhere to a license just to make a copy of it that doesn't cost him anything? Maybe you scream about evil and greed, but some of us have a more nuanced view.
Apple is just as greedy and as "evil" as Microsoft. They're out to make money just like everyone else.
That's not really a productive discussion. I'd argue Microsoft has a lot more power and has repeatedly broken the law and caused great harm to the computing industry. Apple has more or less obeyed the law (even if it is a bad law) does not have sufficient market power yet to do real harm, and has actually provided more benefit and innovation to desktop computing and several other markets, helping to undo some of MS's damage.
As a geek, I and many like me want technology to progress and become cheaper and better. I complain about MS's actions because they prevent that, while Apple mostly does the opposite. If Apple had enough power, they would doubtless be a significant problem and certainly their main motivation (like MS) is greed. Apple, however, takes fewer actions I need to decry and are one of the biggest things eroding MS's power to create a real, competitive marketplace again. I expect companies to be greedy, but if they are greedy and law abiding and our laws are not subverted, that's okay because the capitalist market does a good job of harnessing greed and making it work for the good of the people.
Not everyone lives in USA. Different places have different laws.
Of course.
Where I am, that EULA as no validity.
That's easy to assert, but not many courts have ruled the other way anywhere in the world as yet.
You can't impose a contract to use your product after I bought it.
That's not what this case is about. The product bought was a DVD with OS X on it. Just like a book with a novel written in it. This case is about the right to make a copy of the contents of that DVD to another media, just like making a copy of the book to another form of media. It is a copyright case and in order to have the right to make a copy in many instances, a copier needs a license. This holds true in Canada and the US.
You have to make me accept that contract before I buy it.
By your logic, companies don't have to obey the GPL in Canada, since they can buy a copy of the software from most anyone for a few cents. Then they can ignore the GPL and make copies of it without obeying the GPL which is the license that grants them rights to make copies in exchange for keeping the code open.
So it looks like eveybody in Quebec can go buy OS X and run it on anything they seem fit, even a toaster if they can make it work.
Actually it looks like you don't understand the difference between buying a product and having license to make copies of a copyrighted work.
Who is making more copies outside of what is already permitted by the various statutes?
Potentially Pystar is when they copy it to the hard disk of the computers they sell and load it into RAM or the end user is when they do the same (with Pystar guilty of contributory infringement). At least that's the interpretation our courts have made in previous cases.
That is to say, the first sale doctrine means if you buy a copy (DVD) of OS X, you can resell that copy (DVD). It does not cover copying it from the DVD to a computer or anywhere else.
Sherwin Williams doesn't tell me that I can't use exterior house paint on interior walls. They might recommend otherwise, but I can do what I want with their paint - I paid for it.
This analogy is flawed because there is no copyright on paint. Rather, consider buying a new bestseller. When you buy that book you can read it and keep it all you want, but you need license to make a copy of it in many cases. If the book comes with a license that says you can scan it into your computer only for the purpose of making a personal copy to load onto an ebook reader, well you've been granted an extra legal privilege at the cost of adherence to that license. Would you then argue that since you have bought the book you can change the author's name to your own, scan it in and offer it for free to other's to read on your Web page?
In my theoretical case, I paid for OS X and I can damn well use it how I please. Apple got their money.
Except when they way you plan to use it is illegal under the law, as copyright infringement is. Just because you bought something does not mean you can ignore the law. That's like saying you bought a handgun from Smith and Wesson. They were paid so you can shoot up the Smith and Wesson factory all you want without their permission. That's not what you paid for.
I mostly agree with your commentary. You seem to have more of a grasp of the topic than most here.
I have a hard time believing Apple's other argument, namely that an altered boot loader and kernel extensions constitute copyright infringement, especially when 1) similar bundling techniques are routinely practiced with their Windows counterparts and 2) Apple has been paid for the software it is distributing.
I might clarify this a bit. Apple is arguing the modification is what makes the copying to RAM an infringing copy instead of a fair use copy. It is a tenuous position but a good legal strategy based upon the muddle of court precedent. It might hold up.
I have just one question for Apple: If your computers are truly a hardware and software package, why do you bother to sell the software separately?
The answer any business always has is the same... money. Apple sells OS upgrades for owners of older Macs because it makes them a little extra money and lets them spread out the dev cost a bit more, rather than charging more for new Macs initially. They very well could switch to a strategy of offering free upgrades to all Mac users and charging a tiny bit more for Macs up front, if this court case were to go against them. I think Apple's last financials showed all software and services sales together accounted for something like 6% of revenue. Alternately, Apple could roll the upgrades into their services and have a subscription upgrade model, perhaps tied to the.Mac service.
Apple comes out with a new OS revision every couple of years and charges around 120 bucks US for each upgrade. If Apple can't make a profit off that then they should just fold now because Microsoft makes nowhere near that kind of return from their OS division.
OS X sales account for about 6% of Apple's revenue, but a huge chunk of their R&D. They develop it because it enables the sale of their other devices, such as Macs and iPods. If they can't use it as a differentiator, it loses most of it's value. Until Windows market share drops below about 70%, decoupling the markets would be a foolish business move on Apple's part.
Apple is not Be. Be lost out because it could not get enough of a market to sustain itself.
Be lost because they were competing against a monopolist who leveraged that monopoly against them (as the courts eventually ruled years too late). Until MS loses a significant portion of their ability to do the same to Apple, either through lost market power or if courts became effective, it is not a good business strategy.
Besides, have you seen any Apple commercials recently? Apple is already competing successfully directly against Microsoft, they are just doing it on a small scale.
Advertising against MS is not the same as directly competing. Directly competing would be Apple licensing their OS to OEMs and MS has a lot of power to destroy any such deals and undermine the ability of OS X to interoperate with the rest of the computing world. Apple is marketing against MS, but has wisely chosen to completely bypass the desktop OS market because directly competing against them is an unprofitable venture at this time.
The problem with discussing this topic is that so many geeks wish Apple would sell their OS for installation on generic hardware, for their own personal use. Wishful thinking and assuming themselves to be representative of the greater market then makes people believe and argue that it is a good business case. I'd like to install OS X on generic hardware as much as anyone, but that doesn't make me believe it is likely to be a profitable venture for Apple or that they're going to do it anytime soon, regardless of what happens in this case.
Copy to ram isn't controlled by copyright, so that one is well off. Implicitly by the UK court law and explicitly by the US law.
This is slightly incorrect. Copy to RAM is controlled by copyright under legal precedent in the US, but is considered fair use in almost all cases to date and is mentioned as such.
And if it were to be unusable without a license, they have committed fraud by selling you something that won't work.
What they have sold will work, they may, however, have led the user to commit copyright infringement in the process and committed contributory copyright infringement themselves.
If they want to say "well, it's the license that is sold" then why all the scare about unlicensed copies on P2P?
Because each of those copies and each copy made from them is an act of copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is not theft, but it is a crime.
After all, they have no license with them so either the receiver has one and there is no problem or they receiver doesn't and they are the ones doing bad (but only if they install and use the software).
That's not how the law works. Profiting by encouraging others to violate copyright law is a crime.
Add to that such an EULA is a contract and must be conceeded within 28 days for a full refund if the signee disagrees before that time.
The EULA, however, grants the right to make copies, such as to disk. So if you don't agree to it, you can't make use of the privileges it grants, so you have no legal right to copy OS X to your hard disk or (very arguably) to RAM, as the courts have ruled in the past.
Here's an analogy. You get a contract by mail that says if you end every sentence you speak with "Carl's Jr" and in return you can take anything you want from any Carl's Jr restaurant without paying. So if you go in take take stuff without paying, either you're doing o legally under your contract or you're stealing and are going to be convicted and go to jail. You cant go take things and then say, you don't agree with the terms of the copyright, because that gives you no legal protection from your act which is theft (without a contract).
Short of it is: you don't need a license to copy to RAM, so no EULA breakage can make it illegal: copyright doesn't cover it.
First, it is covered by copyright. Copying to RAM is almost certainly fair use and not an issue though. Copying to the hard disk, however, is likely not fair use, based upon court precedent.
This is the sort of crap PJ took SCO and MS to the coals over but if Apple does it, well, you have every right to go elsewhere (though this doesn't work for SCO or MS...)
Look, I'm not arguing that's how the law should work. That's just my understanding of how it does. As to the comparison to MS, with Apple they are competing in the computer system market against Dell and HP and Lenovo and many others. You have lots of choices. For MS, they are selling to Dell and Lenovo and many others, but those companies do not have any other viable option so antitrust law comes into play. But that' a very different argument and a very different topic and not to be conflated with copyright law.
The long and short of it is, the two things that can happen here are:
Pystar wins, a good copyright precedent is set, Apple adds DRM or some other measure to restrict installation of OS X and users are inconvenienced.
Pystar loses, another bad copyright precedent is set. OS X users don't have to mess with serial numbers and the OS being locked to their hardware restrictively.
I don't see either as a real win for normal people.
You misunderstand. The EULA is a copyright license.
The EULA is not a copyright license. The EULA is a use license.
That is simply incorrect. A license provided after a purchase only applies if it grants benefits as well as places restrictions. That is, it provides a copyright license for making copies, or applies to warranty or support services.
P.S. It's also not a legal contract, because you didn't sign it. ESPECIALLY as the user in a corporate environment, where you never saw it.
EULA's have been upheld by the courts. For example, the GPL is provided after you buy OSS software from a provider and you don't sign it, but it is still legal because it is an agreement that lets you copy the software in exchange for adhering to the licensing terms.
So, this is about copyright, but you think the EULA applies when it's a use license and not a distribution license...
Neither or those is really a legal term unless defined within the contract itself. The EULA is a copyright licensing agreement. Copyright has just been applied strangely by the courts, ruling that making a copy from a CD and to a hard disk or RAM, for example, is a matter for copyright law (with the latter case being fair use in almost all instances).
...and now you're talking about trademarks.
Yes, I'm mentioning trademarks because even most laypeople can see what a blatant legal mistake Pystar made initially. This is demonstrative of the level of legal counsel they had when planning their business. I mention this because it makes it seem much more likely that Pystar is blundering about trying to salvage something from a business plan that will not work for legal reasons, as opposed to the theory that Pystar has a viable business plan going forward and this is part of a brilliant scheme that will actually make money and sell OS X on generic hardware in the long term.
but if by some slim chance Psystar wins its case on the grounds that Apple should have no control over how their product is used as long as the software license is paid for, i.e. that the EULA doesn't hold in this case...
If the EULA held up and could be enforced then Apple would have had a legal injuction enforced against Psystar pretty much immediately and wouldn't need to resort to trying to argue flimsy scenarios like this one regarding the applicability of copyright to supposed copies of OS X made.
You misunderstand. The EULA is a copyright license. In order for it to apply, Pystar has to have made a copy of the work, such as to disk or RAM.
It's about the only thing in their EULA that would hold up, and they wouldn't have to provide support for anything they didn't want to.
I don't think you understand the law very well.
It probably wouldn't make economic sense for them to do so however. You only need to look at Microsoft for the massive profits to be had from a far larger market with a far larger supply of hardware.
You're confusing cause and effect. MS makes huge profits because they have monopoly influence. Apple being unable to tie their hardware and software would make developing OS X unprofitable for Apple, not suddenly make them huge amounts of money. Every company that tries to compete in that market loses big time (BeOS for example). I know you think all the people making piles of money at Apple are incompetent compared to your economic brilliance and that they have somehow overlooked the idea of decoupling the markets, but the fact is, your theory is lousy.
Of course that is moot since Apple has lots of other ways to tie their hardware and software even if the EULA clause is thrown out. If Pystar were to win completely, Apple could just stop selling their OS as a boxed copy and provide it as a free upgrade to hardware customers. Or they could require users to buy a service (like Mac.com) and provide the upgrades free as part of it. Or add some heavy duty DRM and authentication bring the DMCA into it. In short, if Pystar wins, it sets a good legal precedent, but practically just inconveniences OS X users while gaining Pystar nothing in the long run. OS X users will have to get used to entering a big serial number like Windows users.
Pystar were clearly pretty clueless on a legal front when they started this enterprise and now are hoping to get a payoff and get out. You have to be a complete idiot to think you can include "mac" in the name of a computer you're selling despite Apple having a trademark on that term in the computer market.
It depends on how the PDF was created. If the PDF had the source text embedded in the metadata then it will work fine. Now try it with a PDF that's generated by printing to PostScript and then distilling to PDF (as a lot of PDFs are). It won't work.
I use a lot of PDFs from a lot of sources. I can copy and paste text from pretty much all of them with the rare exception of documents that are clearly scanned in versions of printed documents, complete with artifacts left over by the scanner. Now there are issues using multi-column PDFs in some readers that aren't smart enough to recognize the columns when the copy paste is performed, and different readers handle this with different amounts of ease. But that' does not indicate you can't get text out of a PDF, which you can whenever the document is not created from a non-text source.
Whoever did that "text as image" trick, he is a complete moron.
Generally text as images in PDFs are the result of people who scan in paper documents but don't have access to or don't use OCR programs to convert the raw image coming in from the scanner into text.
A document format shouldn't store text as an image. That's why it's called text.
A document shouldn't store text as images. A document format can be misused and should not be trying to interpret images and reject them if they contain text. Heck, I can misuse the standard text files by storing the text as ASCII images output by "banner", making the difficult to copy and paste and near impossible to search. That's not the fault of the format, but me for misusing it.
It's more of a problem with PDF because unlike the example I give with.txt files, because of how the formats are used. Documents that have the as images usually do so because they are scanned in printed files, where no digital source is available and the people inputting it did not apply OCR.
If there were no PDF format, you'd just see big JPG files, or big JPG files embedded in ODF or.doc files and have the same problem.
That said, recognizing the usability issue means there is a client side solution. Good OCR can be built into PDF readers so that those readers can scan the big images and render them into text despite the laziness of the document creator. Of course this will be an error prone process and is just a hack to work around the main problem of lousy document creation procedures resulting from paper centric workflows that have not yet replaced by modern technology.
Perhaps not, but read that Reuters stupidity with huge grains of salt. Because it's full of BS. Nintendo's profits may have fell by over 50 %, but they're still far ahead of their competitors despite that.
Actually Reuters cites Apple's iPod Touch and iPhone as a specific competitor stealing market share, And Apple's profits for both have been steadily growing as more and more game developers release titles, many who began as Nintentdo focused companies.
Still, a lot of the numbers are overblown in the short term. In the long term Nintendo is going to have to do something clever to counteract the device convergence issue.
Software in Ubuntu is NOT hard to install. Seriously, click on the.deb file and click "Install" on the little box that pops up. If the program is intended for Ubuntu yet is not distributed as a deb file then it is not finished.
Then most Linux software is not finished for Ubuntu and Ubuntu is suffering from an even greater lack of titles than anyone I've ever heard has asserted.
Start distributed Windows programs without a setup.exe or msi and watch the mayhem.
Your analogy is flawed because, in general, a.exe file will run on Vista or XP or Win7. They don't have a different package format for different versions the way RedHat and Ubuntu do. Both Windows and Linux have programs break as versions change. You need to compare Apples to Apples and version changes in Windows to version changes in Ubuntu.
What do you expect Canonical to do?
If they want to make their system more usable I think they should adapt their package manager in several ways. First, they should create a way to find and license software from within the package manager, a feature they've announced. Second, they should make sure those apps have the same functionality as other apps managed by the package manager (like auto updates). Adding customer reviews would be nice but is not essential. Adding the ability to automatically re-download already licensed apps or move those apps directly to a new machine and de-authenticate them on the exiting machine is also fairly critical. Finally, they need to make the method for developing and publishing these packages simple for users, by helping to tweak development tools to create the correct packages by default and by offering hosting by Canonical as well as an easy way for developers to run their own repositories that get added to the store.
If publishers don't want to use them then what the hell do you expect Canonical or anybody else to do about it? Hold their hand?
Absolutely. Helping companies clean up their software to work better is one of Canonical's big pushes right now. Remember the free usability testing they're offering? Ideally the available tools should make things easy without any hand holding, but if they are lacking or too unfamiliar to developers, Canonical needs to do whatever it takes to bridge the gap.
Are you serious? Have you ever even used Linux? Hint... Make an executable script on the user's box that goes something like this:
Way to miss the point. In order to use the solution you present you need to put it on every individual machine on the network. You think that's a reasonable solution? Most people just end up putting several executables on the server and letting people guess their platform until they hit the right one. You do know there are use cases where users bring their own machines, right?
Yeah, and if Microsoft and Apple would hold hands and sing kumbaya, you could run Garageband on Windows 7. That makes about as much sense as what you said.
So you expect all developers to magically reform their ways and ignore what is most profitable and you think that is more likely than a consensus and real standards being implemented across Linux distros? I'm talking about the more practical option. You're the one with a head in the clouds idea.
That sucks as a strategy and is inferior to the solution in place on OS X. Why settle for an inferior solution?
Yeah, so make a package and go for the superior solution that includes global security and functionality updates.
I'm not sure I understand your comment. What are you proposing? I'm proposing a merger of OS X's package styles (multiple architectures and portability by default) with Linux's package management style (central management and auto updates) to get the benefits of both on one platform.
First, different versions of Linux use different package managers, most with incompatible package formats and repository specifications...
Fat binaries address none of those problems.
No, but that does speak to your assertion as to how developers of closed source software should be packaging their software for Linux. It explains why that is not a good choice for them and what needs to be fixed if that's the model that is to be used going forward.
I disagree. They're still useful for running apps from network and removable drives.
Well, and Linux supports them in numerous ways. You can pack any combination of binaries, shared libraries, and resources into any of a number of types of bundles.
What you mean is, you can create special versions of software that will work from a network drive or flash drive but no one does because it is hard. Since all the people who care about that functionality have moved to OS X anyway, Linux devs should just concede those users and give up on making applications as functional in their default form. Just because a function is not implemented in Linux apps does not mean the function is not in demand, it often just means the function is too hard to implement for the benefit it brings.
In the mean time users on OS X can and do IM full applications to other users on different platforms and the application "just works" while they shake their heads at those of us on Linux suffering while trying to accomplish the same task.
See, people are confused. "Linux" is not an operating system just like NT is not an operating system. Ubuntu is an OS, WinXP is an os, RedHat is an OS, Win 98 is an OS, just to give a few examples.
That's funny, since I never see claims about the market share for Ubuntu versus Windows while I often see it for Linux versus Windows. I think the definition of operating system in those terms is very muddy so people are understandably confused, especially since almost all the software we're talking about will run on most any version of Linux, it just is difficult to install for normal users.
If a publisher doesn't make an installer for the Ubuntu OS, then that is the publisher's fault.
Why do I care? To me it doesn't matter whose fault it is, only if I can do what I want or not. That's where Apple is winning, by taking responsibility for broken parts of the user experience and filling in any holes rather than blaming others. Hopefully Canonical is doing the same to some extent and that includes making it easy and profitable and a good idea for developers to create software in a way that works well with Ubuntu.
You could publish a file containing the binary and the config files necessary for.rpm,.deb, so on and so forth and some OS detection logic and call it a "Linux" binary if you just had to do that.
Except you really can't today, because the package managers don't support it. What you can do is provide a link to a script or just a binary installer.
And the vast majority of Free software that is distributed via a website link doesn't have the source automatically included so I'm not sure what your contention is with the binary blob thing.
You're misunderstanding my term. When I refer to distribution as a binary, I mean distributing an executable that install the program, rather than just the program and letting the package manager execute and install it.
If a publisher really wants their software to be used by users of a particular OS, there are ways to make the install process from start to finish completely easy and intuitive.
Not really. Like if a publisher wants to have an app that can be run from the network on different Linux boxes from the same executable, I suppose they could replace it with a script that call the right executable for a given machine, somehow. I also think it's beside the point. A developer could write their own Linux variant to work with their software, but they aren't going to. They;re just going to pass on Linux as too difficult to develop for, and provide nothing or some less usable junk and let the nerds figure it out or fail as it pans out.
If every publisher did as good a job with their website as they do, we wouldn't even be talking about this.
If every Linux distro used the same standards and made the task easy for developers we wouldn't be talking about it either. Given Linux's tiny market share and the resultant lack of financial motivation for Website developers, which do you think is more likely to happen? Which can people interested in promoting Linux actually do?
Right, so a developer for Ubuntu just needs to write a specific version of their application for removable media and network drives
Yep, you got it. Typically referred to as static binaries.
That sucks as a strategy and is inferior to the solution in place on OS X. Why settle for an inferior solution?
Portablefirefox is a windows app, this only proves that there is demand for it on that platform.
They also specifically support Linux via WINE, so the demand is there on Linux if not the usability.
I think the way forward fot Linux distros is by paying up for distros so that they can make commercial deals with sellers of proprietary software we might need (codecs, compilers, engineering, virtualization, whatever).
Most Linux based business models use Linux as a free portion of a package sold for profit, whether that's an appliance, a service, or a cell phone. The interesting part of copyleft is it tends to creep and provide business advantages to partners who apply it more and more widely. Most of the specific items you cite, however, seem unlikely candidates in the mid and long term.
BTW, I think it's absolutely fabulous how people like Stallman were able to instill the mentality in kids that go to good universities across the world that they should pay LESS (or ZERO) for the tools of their trade than any other working category would pay.
The difference is the tools of the trade are primarily intellectual property rather than physical. I've never heard a commercial programmer claim they should get their hardware for free by law, but I've never heard a carpenter claim they should be paying for the right to imitate baroque era furniture. I have heard auto mechanics make a strong claim they should not have to pay fees in order to use the trouble codes coming out of automobiles.
The way you should install non-free applications on Linux is to add the company's repository to your software sources. That way, you get automatic selection of the right binary and automatic updates. Some companies already support that.
Very few companies support that so far as I've seen and for good reason. First, different versions of Linux use different package managers, most with incompatible package formats and repository specifications. So if a developer wants to target "Linux" they need to host multiple repositories. Second, even if they put software in a repository for downloads and updates, none of the package managers to date support licensing and registration and sales, so they have to run a separate service for that task and most buy that service prepackaged from a company that also offers updates from within the app that will work on all Linux distros. Thirdly, since Linux distros do not yet offer a "store" for commercial apps, most users are discovering and buying from a Web page, and it's not easy to make a single link on a Web page that will add the right repository to the right package manager for a given architecture, so they end up providing a binary installer to figure it out on the machine and which also comes with the registration and update stuff from a third party.
Long term, I expect that SuSE, Ubuntu/Canonical, and RedHat will be offering app stores that make selling and buying commercial Linux apps as easy as iPhone apps.
Canonical has announced their intention to include such a store in their new package manager eventually, and it may relieve many of the problems listed if they do it well enough and make it attractive and cost effective for developers.
Fat binaries are a throwback to the past; they aren't needed in the era of app stores and package management.
I disagree. They're still useful for running apps from network and removable drives. They're still useful for installation from older computers when doing hardware upgrades. They're still useful for filling in the holes where package managers have not yet caught up. Until you can buy a new computer and automagically get all the same software installed from your old computer as well as registered and licenses transferred to the new machine, fat binaries will be useful... and maybe even thereafter for the use cases I described.
Also, I really like having the resources in a folder contained within an app, so it is easy to extract images or movies or audio files directly from a known location without any special tools, so separation of resources and binaries ala OS X is very attractive.
Yes. The vendor's repository gets added to your repository list. Think App Store for the desktop, only better and without Apple's insidious control.
First, last time I tried it, automatically adding a repository into a specific package manager was difficult or impossible depending upon the manager. Automatically adding a repository to an unknown Linux distro was too hard to try.
Second, aside from the defunct Loki, do any commercial games come distributed in a repository? (Even Loki only used it for demos, right?) I've only seen ones that ship with their own binary installers that bypass the package manager entirely.
Why don't you ask all the companies (including Apple) that make you go through a wizard and install crap all over the system why they do it.
For the most part, Apple doesn't use installation wizards, aside from on Windows where there are not really many other options. I'm a huge fan of package managers, but existing ones on Linux are so fragmented and lacking in features needed by closed source companies that they provide little of the advantage they could while adding complexity and making the interface less consistent.
fails to handle installation from Web sites or disks well.
That couldn't be further from the truth. When I go to a website, say frostwire.com, and click on the Ubuntu download button for an application, the app downloads and the installer automatically opens.
The problem being, that site is a rare exception. Very few sites tailor their downloads for each particular Linux distro and package manager and even those that do often have a confusing array of different download options that rely upon the user having a lot more information about their OS and hardware than is common among normal users. A lot more common situation is to be directed to execute a series of CLI commands or to be given a binary blob installer that must be downloaded and run. This is no worse than Windows, mind you, except that Windows users are accustomed to it as the only method, whereas under Ubuntu there are several different methods users must learn.
Just what exactly are you trying to run off of your flash drive?
All sorts of things, from specialized browsers to front ends for a remote ticket management service to a preferred word processor.
Obviously software in Windows that is designed to run without having to actually be installed is designed that way. If the author of a program for Ubuntu wants their program to run without being installed, all they have to do is, again, design it that way.
Right, so a developer for Ubuntu just needs to write a specific version of their application for removable media and network drives, or rely upon very expert users to configure their software to run that way, and install a different version for each platform and hope the user knows what the specific platform of every machine they use it on is and they have enough free space to install those multiple copies. You don't think that is more than a little cumbersome compared to simply being able to put any application on it and run it without having to know anything but the OS you're using?
You don't see this because the demand just isn't there.
Sure there is, mobilefirefox, for example. You just don't see it much because it's hard to do and because there's a significant barrier when you need a specialized version of the program just for a particular use.
And as for commercial programs, what's hard to install?
A lot of things are hard to install and/or easy to install but then bypass the repository and package manager entirely leading to user confusion, security messiness, and multiple services performing the same task but for different apps.
That's fine and that's your choice. However, like you said, this functionality is integrated into Ubuntu so there isn't really an argument there.
Except of course it's integrated into Ubuntu in a way that is incompatible with most other Linux distros let alone OS's, so it is simply not used. Further, it's build into Ubuntu in a way that currently is not satisfactory for most commercial software offerings and so is not used for them.
Canonical is taking this task very seriously, the first phase being the Software Store in version 9.10. Package management should be iPhone easy. I imagine it will be.
I hope so. My point was mostly that right now, it does not work very well for real world use cases. Further, because the subset of users of just Ubuntu Linux is so small, a lot more needs to be done to motivate developers to use it, including getting buy in for a single system that could work on all Linux distros and potentially OS X or Windows. Finally, developers and users need to pay attention and lend support when someone comes up with real improvements, like support for multiple platforms from the get go to improve all the use cases where currently Linux is failing in the real world.
Huh? How do you use a package manager for finding new apps?
You browse through or search the descriptions of the packages in the package manager.
Also, my experience has been that in Mac OSX (admittedly, tiger), applications do not automatically clean up their files in Application\ Support. In any case, it's inefficient to have every program written for mac osx expected to do that on its own;
Amen.
The actual act of downloading and installing software, once you have determined what you want, is MUCH easier on a package manager than via the world wide web.
Ideally a link of the Web should start your package manager downloading and installing a program. Having to go from a Web browser or IRC client, then enter the same package into a package manager to find it is an extra step that is not ideal.
Compare this to the mac osx method. You want a new audio player which can play flac (something there is a hilarious lack of on mac, I might add.) You do some googling and find one called "Cog" which is abandonware in alpha stages, but it might work well enough to play that new album you got off of demonoid.
That's funny. When I wanted to play a FLAC file I just did a Google search, found one of several Quicktime Components that could handle it, and dumped it into my Library and suddenly several of my music playing applications handled them just fine, including iTunes.
Admittedly I blew it a little out of proportion, but there are still a significantly larger number of steps involved than just "sudo apt-get install cog" and "sudo apt-get purge cog".
Yeah that's great and all, but it ignores all the software that apt can't handle, which ships as a binary installer for Linux or where you don't know the name of the package or what what repository it is in or which is not in any repository. Don't get me wrong; I think package managers are the way to go, but only when you can get them working well enough so that they can handle all your software and you're not juggling multiple install/uninstall methods from multiple interfaces. I installed some software under Ubuntu the other day and documented it is part of a usability study. 18 command line entries were required to install and run an OSS program, some dependencies of which were in repositories and some of which were not. In no one location did I find all the steps required for installing it and uninstalling it was performed by rolling back the VM because I had little hope of successfully doing so in any other way without crippling things it plugged into.
The fact that you alluded to package managers being a great way to "find" applications makes me think that you don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps you're used to the Add/Remove Programs thing on ubuntu; I would never use that as a way of seriously determining what application I want.
Ahh, but that and Google are the two places a normal user is likely to go. I'd note Ubuntu is replacing the package managers with a single unified one that is eventually intended to handle buying and installing commercial software as well.
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Please tell me why the First Sale doctrine should apply to books but not to computer software.
The first sale doctrine applies to both, you're just misunderstanding it. It applies to the original copy, not subsequent copies of a work like the copy you make on your computer's hard drive. To make that copy you need a license or you're probably infringing someone's copyright. The copyright holder can include a whole lot of things in exchange for you getting the right to copy the work from the disk.
"You misunderstand. The EULA is a copyright license."
You misunderstand. The EULA is a one-sided contract. There is no negotiation, there is no signature from both parties. There is only "You follow this or else"
..or else you don't make copies. This is the same bargain offered by the GPL. That's the other side to it. You follow this and in exchange you can make copies of the copyrighted work. If you don't want to follow this license, you don't have to, but you can't make copies. Users are free to negotiate a different deal with Apple, this is just a standard one they offer to everyone.
Psystar needs to get a change of venue to California and just nullify the EULA.
Pystar is unlikely to win in such a way, but I'm sure they'll appreciate your free legal advice.
Or maybe they just need to hire me - getting EA's EULA removed and modified was pretty damned easy, I'd be more than happy to put the squeeze on Apple as well.
Good luck with that. I don't see it making any real difference in the long run. Apple has lots of other ways to tie their OS and hardware, including DRM, so Pystar has no long term business plan. The best they can hope for is to win, get a settlement, set a good precedent, and then find another business when Apple implements DRM or some other method that will cause mild inconvenience to end users but keep OS X tied to Apple hardware.
If I buy a book, I can legally do whatever I want with it. Read it, shred it, use it for toilet paper. If I then choose to sell the remains of the book, That I can also do this legally...just so long as I do not copy it (copyright infringement).
Yes.
If I buy a legal boxed copy OS X, then I should have the same rights to do as I please..
Yes you do. You can read the DVD, shred it, or use it for toilet paper and sell the scraps.
...which includes installing it on my own hardware regardless of it been an Apple branded box or not.
How do you figure? Can you legally install your book on a computer as part of a for profit venture where you modify the book then sell the computer? What you're missing is that the process of installing the OS includes making copies of it. The courts have ruled you need a license to install software because of that fact. This is partly ameliorated by the fact that fair use rights apply differently if you need to make a copy in order to use copyrighted work for its primary purpose. That said, you can't just ignore that copyright law restricts your ability to copy both books and software by pretending installing software does not make a copy of it. Rather we need to reform copyright law to make such copying legal.
What Psystar is doing here is the equivalent of copying the book, slapping on a different cover, and selling it for profit.
No... it's the equivalent of buying a book, slapping on a different cover, and selling it for profit.
If that were the case, Apple would have nothing to sue over. That is not the case. To keep the analogy working it would have to be:
buying a book, scanning the book and uploading it to an ebook reader, editing the cover and changing some things, then selling the ebook reader with the book on it. The case is further muddled by the fact that they do have a license to make a copy to an ebook reader, just not that ebook reader.
While a lot of us feel that should be legal, a lot of us feel a lot of things should be legal under copyright law that do not currently seem to be.
Apple is being paid for every copy of OS X.
No, they're being paid for the copy on the DVD they sell. They're not being paid for each copy you make in RAM or onto the hard disk.
I don't think Apple has a right to say what piece of hardware you can run OS X on. It's paid for, end of story.
Ethically, I tend to agree with you. Legally, that's not the way copyright law is written and it needs to be reformed in many, many ways before it is sensible.
When everyone else tries to lock stuff down we scream about how evil and greedy they are.
You mean like when Linux locks down his kernel with the GPL forcing people to adhere to a license just to make a copy of it that doesn't cost him anything? Maybe you scream about evil and greed, but some of us have a more nuanced view.
Apple is just as greedy and as "evil" as Microsoft. They're out to make money just like everyone else.
That's not really a productive discussion. I'd argue Microsoft has a lot more power and has repeatedly broken the law and caused great harm to the computing industry. Apple has more or less obeyed the law (even if it is a bad law) does not have sufficient market power yet to do real harm, and has actually provided more benefit and innovation to desktop computing and several other markets, helping to undo some of MS's damage.
As a geek, I and many like me want technology to progress and become cheaper and better. I complain about MS's actions because they prevent that, while Apple mostly does the opposite. If Apple had enough power, they would doubtless be a significant problem and certainly their main motivation (like MS) is greed. Apple, however, takes fewer actions I need to decry and are one of the biggest things eroding MS's power to create a real, competitive marketplace again. I expect companies to be greedy, but if they are greedy and law abiding and our laws are not subverted, that's okay because the capitalist market does a good job of harnessing greed and making it work for the good of the people.
Not everyone lives in USA. Different places have different laws.
Of course.
Where I am, that EULA as no validity.
That's easy to assert, but not many courts have ruled the other way anywhere in the world as yet.
You can't impose a contract to use your product after I bought it.
That's not what this case is about. The product bought was a DVD with OS X on it. Just like a book with a novel written in it. This case is about the right to make a copy of the contents of that DVD to another media, just like making a copy of the book to another form of media. It is a copyright case and in order to have the right to make a copy in many instances, a copier needs a license. This holds true in Canada and the US.
You have to make me accept that contract before I buy it.
By your logic, companies don't have to obey the GPL in Canada, since they can buy a copy of the software from most anyone for a few cents. Then they can ignore the GPL and make copies of it without obeying the GPL which is the license that grants them rights to make copies in exchange for keeping the code open.
So it looks like eveybody in Quebec can go buy OS X and run it on anything they seem fit, even a toaster if they can make it work.
Actually it looks like you don't understand the difference between buying a product and having license to make copies of a copyrighted work.
Who is making more copies outside of what is already permitted by the various statutes?
Potentially Pystar is when they copy it to the hard disk of the computers they sell and load it into RAM or the end user is when they do the same (with Pystar guilty of contributory infringement). At least that's the interpretation our courts have made in previous cases.
That is to say, the first sale doctrine means if you buy a copy (DVD) of OS X, you can resell that copy (DVD). It does not cover copying it from the DVD to a computer or anywhere else.
Sherwin Williams doesn't tell me that I can't use exterior house paint on interior walls. They might recommend otherwise, but I can do what I want with their paint - I paid for it.
This analogy is flawed because there is no copyright on paint. Rather, consider buying a new bestseller. When you buy that book you can read it and keep it all you want, but you need license to make a copy of it in many cases. If the book comes with a license that says you can scan it into your computer only for the purpose of making a personal copy to load onto an ebook reader, well you've been granted an extra legal privilege at the cost of adherence to that license. Would you then argue that since you have bought the book you can change the author's name to your own, scan it in and offer it for free to other's to read on your Web page?
In my theoretical case, I paid for OS X and I can damn well use it how I please. Apple got their money.
Except when they way you plan to use it is illegal under the law, as copyright infringement is. Just because you bought something does not mean you can ignore the law. That's like saying you bought a handgun from Smith and Wesson. They were paid so you can shoot up the Smith and Wesson factory all you want without their permission. That's not what you paid for.
I mostly agree with your commentary. You seem to have more of a grasp of the topic than most here.
I have a hard time believing Apple's other argument, namely that an altered boot loader and kernel extensions constitute copyright infringement, especially when 1) similar bundling techniques are routinely practiced with their Windows counterparts and 2) Apple has been paid for the software it is distributing.
I might clarify this a bit. Apple is arguing the modification is what makes the copying to RAM an infringing copy instead of a fair use copy. It is a tenuous position but a good legal strategy based upon the muddle of court precedent. It might hold up.
I have just one question for Apple: If your computers are truly a hardware and software package, why do you bother to sell the software separately?
The answer any business always has is the same... money. Apple sells OS upgrades for owners of older Macs because it makes them a little extra money and lets them spread out the dev cost a bit more, rather than charging more for new Macs initially. They very well could switch to a strategy of offering free upgrades to all Mac users and charging a tiny bit more for Macs up front, if this court case were to go against them. I think Apple's last financials showed all software and services sales together accounted for something like 6% of revenue. Alternately, Apple could roll the upgrades into their services and have a subscription upgrade model, perhaps tied to the .Mac service.
Apple comes out with a new OS revision every couple of years and charges around 120 bucks US for each upgrade. If Apple can't make a profit off that then they should just fold now because Microsoft makes nowhere near that kind of return from their OS division.
OS X sales account for about 6% of Apple's revenue, but a huge chunk of their R&D. They develop it because it enables the sale of their other devices, such as Macs and iPods. If they can't use it as a differentiator, it loses most of it's value. Until Windows market share drops below about 70%, decoupling the markets would be a foolish business move on Apple's part.
Apple is not Be. Be lost out because it could not get enough of a market to sustain itself.
Be lost because they were competing against a monopolist who leveraged that monopoly against them (as the courts eventually ruled years too late). Until MS loses a significant portion of their ability to do the same to Apple, either through lost market power or if courts became effective, it is not a good business strategy.
Besides, have you seen any Apple commercials recently? Apple is already competing successfully directly against Microsoft, they are just doing it on a small scale.
Advertising against MS is not the same as directly competing. Directly competing would be Apple licensing their OS to OEMs and MS has a lot of power to destroy any such deals and undermine the ability of OS X to interoperate with the rest of the computing world. Apple is marketing against MS, but has wisely chosen to completely bypass the desktop OS market because directly competing against them is an unprofitable venture at this time.
The problem with discussing this topic is that so many geeks wish Apple would sell their OS for installation on generic hardware, for their own personal use. Wishful thinking and assuming themselves to be representative of the greater market then makes people believe and argue that it is a good business case. I'd like to install OS X on generic hardware as much as anyone, but that doesn't make me believe it is likely to be a profitable venture for Apple or that they're going to do it anytime soon, regardless of what happens in this case.
Copy to ram isn't controlled by copyright, so that one is well off. Implicitly by the UK court law and explicitly by the US law.
This is slightly incorrect. Copy to RAM is controlled by copyright under legal precedent in the US, but is considered fair use in almost all cases to date and is mentioned as such.
And if it were to be unusable without a license, they have committed fraud by selling you something that won't work.
What they have sold will work, they may, however, have led the user to commit copyright infringement in the process and committed contributory copyright infringement themselves.
If they want to say "well, it's the license that is sold" then why all the scare about unlicensed copies on P2P?
Because each of those copies and each copy made from them is an act of copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is not theft, but it is a crime.
After all, they have no license with them so either the receiver has one and there is no problem or they receiver doesn't and they are the ones doing bad (but only if they install and use the software).
That's not how the law works. Profiting by encouraging others to violate copyright law is a crime.
Add to that such an EULA is a contract and must be conceeded within 28 days for a full refund if the signee disagrees before that time.
The EULA, however, grants the right to make copies, such as to disk. So if you don't agree to it, you can't make use of the privileges it grants, so you have no legal right to copy OS X to your hard disk or (very arguably) to RAM, as the courts have ruled in the past.
Here's an analogy. You get a contract by mail that says if you end every sentence you speak with "Carl's Jr" and in return you can take anything you want from any Carl's Jr restaurant without paying. So if you go in take take stuff without paying, either you're doing o legally under your contract or you're stealing and are going to be convicted and go to jail. You cant go take things and then say, you don't agree with the terms of the copyright, because that gives you no legal protection from your act which is theft (without a contract).
Short of it is: you don't need a license to copy to RAM, so no EULA breakage can make it illegal: copyright doesn't cover it.
First, it is covered by copyright. Copying to RAM is almost certainly fair use and not an issue though. Copying to the hard disk, however, is likely not fair use, based upon court precedent.
This is the sort of crap PJ took SCO and MS to the coals over but if Apple does it, well, you have every right to go elsewhere (though this doesn't work for SCO or MS...)
Look, I'm not arguing that's how the law should work. That's just my understanding of how it does. As to the comparison to MS, with Apple they are competing in the computer system market against Dell and HP and Lenovo and many others. You have lots of choices. For MS, they are selling to Dell and Lenovo and many others, but those companies do not have any other viable option so antitrust law comes into play. But that' a very different argument and a very different topic and not to be conflated with copyright law.
The long and short of it is, the two things that can happen here are:
I don't see either as a real win for normal people.
You misunderstand. The EULA is a copyright license.
The EULA is not a copyright license. The EULA is a use license.
That is simply incorrect. A license provided after a purchase only applies if it grants benefits as well as places restrictions. That is, it provides a copyright license for making copies, or applies to warranty or support services.
P.S. It's also not a legal contract, because you didn't sign it. ESPECIALLY as the user in a corporate environment, where you never saw it.
EULA's have been upheld by the courts. For example, the GPL is provided after you buy OSS software from a provider and you don't sign it, but it is still legal because it is an agreement that lets you copy the software in exchange for adhering to the licensing terms.
So, this is about copyright, but you think the EULA applies when it's a use license and not a distribution license...
Neither or those is really a legal term unless defined within the contract itself. The EULA is a copyright licensing agreement. Copyright has just been applied strangely by the courts, ruling that making a copy from a CD and to a hard disk or RAM, for example, is a matter for copyright law (with the latter case being fair use in almost all instances).
...and now you're talking about trademarks.
Yes, I'm mentioning trademarks because even most laypeople can see what a blatant legal mistake Pystar made initially. This is demonstrative of the level of legal counsel they had when planning their business. I mention this because it makes it seem much more likely that Pystar is blundering about trying to salvage something from a business plan that will not work for legal reasons, as opposed to the theory that Pystar has a viable business plan going forward and this is part of a brilliant scheme that will actually make money and sell OS X on generic hardware in the long term.
but if by some slim chance Psystar wins its case on the grounds that Apple should have no control over how their product is used as long as the software license is paid for, i.e. that the EULA doesn't hold in this case...
If the EULA held up and could be enforced then Apple would have had a legal injuction enforced against Psystar pretty much immediately and wouldn't need to resort to trying to argue flimsy scenarios like this one regarding the applicability of copyright to supposed copies of OS X made.
You misunderstand. The EULA is a copyright license. In order for it to apply, Pystar has to have made a copy of the work, such as to disk or RAM.
It's about the only thing in their EULA that would hold up, and they wouldn't have to provide support for anything they didn't want to.
I don't think you understand the law very well.
It probably wouldn't make economic sense for them to do so however. You only need to look at Microsoft for the massive profits to be had from a far larger market with a far larger supply of hardware.
You're confusing cause and effect. MS makes huge profits because they have monopoly influence. Apple being unable to tie their hardware and software would make developing OS X unprofitable for Apple, not suddenly make them huge amounts of money. Every company that tries to compete in that market loses big time (BeOS for example). I know you think all the people making piles of money at Apple are incompetent compared to your economic brilliance and that they have somehow overlooked the idea of decoupling the markets, but the fact is, your theory is lousy.
Of course that is moot since Apple has lots of other ways to tie their hardware and software even if the EULA clause is thrown out. If Pystar were to win completely, Apple could just stop selling their OS as a boxed copy and provide it as a free upgrade to hardware customers. Or they could require users to buy a service (like Mac.com) and provide the upgrades free as part of it. Or add some heavy duty DRM and authentication bring the DMCA into it. In short, if Pystar wins, it sets a good legal precedent, but practically just inconveniences OS X users while gaining Pystar nothing in the long run. OS X users will have to get used to entering a big serial number like Windows users.
Pystar were clearly pretty clueless on a legal front when they started this enterprise and now are hoping to get a payoff and get out. You have to be a complete idiot to think you can include "mac" in the name of a computer you're selling despite Apple having a trademark on that term in the computer market.
It depends on how the PDF was created. If the PDF had the source text embedded in the metadata then it will work fine. Now try it with a PDF that's generated by printing to PostScript and then distilling to PDF (as a lot of PDFs are). It won't work.
I use a lot of PDFs from a lot of sources. I can copy and paste text from pretty much all of them with the rare exception of documents that are clearly scanned in versions of printed documents, complete with artifacts left over by the scanner. Now there are issues using multi-column PDFs in some readers that aren't smart enough to recognize the columns when the copy paste is performed, and different readers handle this with different amounts of ease. But that' does not indicate you can't get text out of a PDF, which you can whenever the document is not created from a non-text source.
Whoever did that "text as image" trick, he is a complete moron.
Generally text as images in PDFs are the result of people who scan in paper documents but don't have access to or don't use OCR programs to convert the raw image coming in from the scanner into text.
A document format shouldn't store text as an image. That's why it's called text.
A document shouldn't store text as images. A document format can be misused and should not be trying to interpret images and reject them if they contain text. Heck, I can misuse the standard text files by storing the text as ASCII images output by "banner", making the difficult to copy and paste and near impossible to search. That's not the fault of the format, but me for misusing it.
It's more of a problem with PDF because unlike the example I give with .txt files, because of how the formats are used. Documents that have the as images usually do so because they are scanned in printed files, where no digital source is available and the people inputting it did not apply OCR.
If there were no PDF format, you'd just see big JPG files, or big JPG files embedded in ODF or .doc files and have the same problem.
That said, recognizing the usability issue means there is a client side solution. Good OCR can be built into PDF readers so that those readers can scan the big images and render them into text despite the laziness of the document creator. Of course this will be an error prone process and is just a hack to work around the main problem of lousy document creation procedures resulting from paper centric workflows that have not yet replaced by modern technology.
Perhaps not, but read that Reuters stupidity with huge grains of salt. Because it's full of BS. Nintendo's profits may have fell by over 50 %, but they're still far ahead of their competitors despite that.
Actually Reuters cites Apple's iPod Touch and iPhone as a specific competitor stealing market share, And Apple's profits for both have been steadily growing as more and more game developers release titles, many who began as Nintentdo focused companies.
Still, a lot of the numbers are overblown in the short term. In the long term Nintendo is going to have to do something clever to counteract the device convergence issue.
Software in Ubuntu is NOT hard to install. Seriously, click on the .deb file and click "Install" on the little box that pops up. If the program is intended for Ubuntu yet is not distributed as a deb file then it is not finished.
Then most Linux software is not finished for Ubuntu and Ubuntu is suffering from an even greater lack of titles than anyone I've ever heard has asserted.
Start distributed Windows programs without a setup.exe or msi and watch the mayhem.
Your analogy is flawed because, in general, a .exe file will run on Vista or XP or Win7. They don't have a different package format for different versions the way RedHat and Ubuntu do. Both Windows and Linux have programs break as versions change. You need to compare Apples to Apples and version changes in Windows to version changes in Ubuntu.
What do you expect Canonical to do?
If they want to make their system more usable I think they should adapt their package manager in several ways. First, they should create a way to find and license software from within the package manager, a feature they've announced. Second, they should make sure those apps have the same functionality as other apps managed by the package manager (like auto updates). Adding customer reviews would be nice but is not essential. Adding the ability to automatically re-download already licensed apps or move those apps directly to a new machine and de-authenticate them on the exiting machine is also fairly critical. Finally, they need to make the method for developing and publishing these packages simple for users, by helping to tweak development tools to create the correct packages by default and by offering hosting by Canonical as well as an easy way for developers to run their own repositories that get added to the store.
If publishers don't want to use them then what the hell do you expect Canonical or anybody else to do about it? Hold their hand?
Absolutely. Helping companies clean up their software to work better is one of Canonical's big pushes right now. Remember the free usability testing they're offering? Ideally the available tools should make things easy without any hand holding, but if they are lacking or too unfamiliar to developers, Canonical needs to do whatever it takes to bridge the gap.
Are you serious? Have you ever even used Linux? Hint... Make an executable script on the user's box that goes something like this:
Way to miss the point. In order to use the solution you present you need to put it on every individual machine on the network. You think that's a reasonable solution? Most people just end up putting several executables on the server and letting people guess their platform until they hit the right one. You do know there are use cases where users bring their own machines, right?
Yeah, and if Microsoft and Apple would hold hands and sing kumbaya, you could run Garageband on Windows 7. That makes about as much sense as what you said.
So you expect all developers to magically reform their ways and ignore what is most profitable and you think that is more likely than a consensus and real standards being implemented across Linux distros? I'm talking about the more practical option. You're the one with a head in the clouds idea.
That sucks as a strategy and is inferior to the solution in place on OS X. Why settle for an inferior solution?
Yeah, so make a package and go for the superior solution that includes global security and functionality updates.
I'm not sure I understand your comment. What are you proposing? I'm proposing a merger of OS X's package styles (multiple architectures and portability by default) with Linux's package management style (central management and auto updates) to get the benefits of both on one platform.
First, different versions of Linux use different package managers, most with incompatible package formats and repository specifications ...
Fat binaries address none of those problems.
No, but that does speak to your assertion as to how developers of closed source software should be packaging their software for Linux. It explains why that is not a good choice for them and what needs to be fixed if that's the model that is to be used going forward.
I disagree. They're still useful for running apps from network and removable drives.
Well, and Linux supports them in numerous ways. You can pack any combination of binaries, shared libraries, and resources into any of a number of types of bundles.
What you mean is, you can create special versions of software that will work from a network drive or flash drive but no one does because it is hard. Since all the people who care about that functionality have moved to OS X anyway, Linux devs should just concede those users and give up on making applications as functional in their default form. Just because a function is not implemented in Linux apps does not mean the function is not in demand, it often just means the function is too hard to implement for the benefit it brings.
In the mean time users on OS X can and do IM full applications to other users on different platforms and the application "just works" while they shake their heads at those of us on Linux suffering while trying to accomplish the same task.
See, people are confused. "Linux" is not an operating system just like NT is not an operating system. Ubuntu is an OS, WinXP is an os, RedHat is an OS, Win 98 is an OS, just to give a few examples.
That's funny, since I never see claims about the market share for Ubuntu versus Windows while I often see it for Linux versus Windows. I think the definition of operating system in those terms is very muddy so people are understandably confused, especially since almost all the software we're talking about will run on most any version of Linux, it just is difficult to install for normal users.
If a publisher doesn't make an installer for the Ubuntu OS, then that is the publisher's fault.
Why do I care? To me it doesn't matter whose fault it is, only if I can do what I want or not. That's where Apple is winning, by taking responsibility for broken parts of the user experience and filling in any holes rather than blaming others. Hopefully Canonical is doing the same to some extent and that includes making it easy and profitable and a good idea for developers to create software in a way that works well with Ubuntu.
You could publish a file containing the binary and the config files necessary for .rpm, .deb, so on and so forth and some OS detection logic and call it a "Linux" binary if you just had to do that.
Except you really can't today, because the package managers don't support it. What you can do is provide a link to a script or just a binary installer.
And the vast majority of Free software that is distributed via a website link doesn't have the source automatically included so I'm not sure what your contention is with the binary blob thing.
You're misunderstanding my term. When I refer to distribution as a binary, I mean distributing an executable that install the program, rather than just the program and letting the package manager execute and install it.
If a publisher really wants their software to be used by users of a particular OS, there are ways to make the install process from start to finish completely easy and intuitive.
Not really. Like if a publisher wants to have an app that can be run from the network on different Linux boxes from the same executable, I suppose they could replace it with a script that call the right executable for a given machine, somehow. I also think it's beside the point. A developer could write their own Linux variant to work with their software, but they aren't going to. They;re just going to pass on Linux as too difficult to develop for, and provide nothing or some less usable junk and let the nerds figure it out or fail as it pans out.
If every publisher did as good a job with their website as they do, we wouldn't even be talking about this.
If every Linux distro used the same standards and made the task easy for developers we wouldn't be talking about it either. Given Linux's tiny market share and the resultant lack of financial motivation for Website developers, which do you think is more likely to happen? Which can people interested in promoting Linux actually do?
Right, so a developer for Ubuntu just needs to write a specific version of their application for removable media and network drives
Yep, you got it. Typically referred to as static binaries.
That sucks as a strategy and is inferior to the solution in place on OS X. Why settle for an inferior solution?
Portablefirefox is a windows app, this only proves that there is demand for it on that platform.
They also specifically support Linux via WINE, so the demand is there on Linux if not the usability.
...if the demand were there, you'd see it.
That's a weak cop out for explaining away
I think the way forward fot Linux distros is by paying up for distros so that they can make commercial deals with sellers of proprietary software we might need (codecs, compilers, engineering, virtualization, whatever).
Most Linux based business models use Linux as a free portion of a package sold for profit, whether that's an appliance, a service, or a cell phone. The interesting part of copyleft is it tends to creep and provide business advantages to partners who apply it more and more widely. Most of the specific items you cite, however, seem unlikely candidates in the mid and long term.
BTW, I think it's absolutely fabulous how people like Stallman were able to instill the mentality in kids that go to good universities across the world that they should pay LESS (or ZERO) for the tools of their trade than any other working category would pay.
The difference is the tools of the trade are primarily intellectual property rather than physical. I've never heard a commercial programmer claim they should get their hardware for free by law, but I've never heard a carpenter claim they should be paying for the right to imitate baroque era furniture. I have heard auto mechanics make a strong claim they should not have to pay fees in order to use the trouble codes coming out of automobiles.
But that discussion is a bit off topic.
The way you should install non-free applications on Linux is to add the company's repository to your software sources. That way, you get automatic selection of the right binary and automatic updates. Some companies already support that.
Very few companies support that so far as I've seen and for good reason. First, different versions of Linux use different package managers, most with incompatible package formats and repository specifications. So if a developer wants to target "Linux" they need to host multiple repositories. Second, even if they put software in a repository for downloads and updates, none of the package managers to date support licensing and registration and sales, so they have to run a separate service for that task and most buy that service prepackaged from a company that also offers updates from within the app that will work on all Linux distros. Thirdly, since Linux distros do not yet offer a "store" for commercial apps, most users are discovering and buying from a Web page, and it's not easy to make a single link on a Web page that will add the right repository to the right package manager for a given architecture, so they end up providing a binary installer to figure it out on the machine and which also comes with the registration and update stuff from a third party.
Long term, I expect that SuSE, Ubuntu/Canonical, and RedHat will be offering app stores that make selling and buying commercial Linux apps as easy as iPhone apps.
Canonical has announced their intention to include such a store in their new package manager eventually, and it may relieve many of the problems listed if they do it well enough and make it attractive and cost effective for developers.
Fat binaries are a throwback to the past; they aren't needed in the era of app stores and package management.
I disagree. They're still useful for running apps from network and removable drives. They're still useful for installation from older computers when doing hardware upgrades. They're still useful for filling in the holes where package managers have not yet caught up. Until you can buy a new computer and automagically get all the same software installed from your old computer as well as registered and licenses transferred to the new machine, fat binaries will be useful... and maybe even thereafter for the use cases I described.
Also, I really like having the resources in a folder contained within an app, so it is easy to extract images or movies or audio files directly from a known location without any special tools, so separation of resources and binaries ala OS X is very attractive.
Yes. The vendor's repository gets added to your repository list. Think App Store for the desktop, only better and without Apple's insidious control.
First, last time I tried it, automatically adding a repository into a specific package manager was difficult or impossible depending upon the manager. Automatically adding a repository to an unknown Linux distro was too hard to try.
Second, aside from the defunct Loki, do any commercial games come distributed in a repository? (Even Loki only used it for demos, right?) I've only seen ones that ship with their own binary installers that bypass the package manager entirely.
Why don't you ask all the companies (including Apple) that make you go through a wizard and install crap all over the system why they do it.
For the most part, Apple doesn't use installation wizards, aside from on Windows where there are not really many other options. I'm a huge fan of package managers, but existing ones on Linux are so fragmented and lacking in features needed by closed source companies that they provide little of the advantage they could while adding complexity and making the interface less consistent.
fails to handle installation from Web sites or disks well.
That couldn't be further from the truth. When I go to a website, say frostwire.com, and click on the Ubuntu download button for an application, the app downloads and the installer automatically opens.
The problem being, that site is a rare exception. Very few sites tailor their downloads for each particular Linux distro and package manager and even those that do often have a confusing array of different download options that rely upon the user having a lot more information about their OS and hardware than is common among normal users. A lot more common situation is to be directed to execute a series of CLI commands or to be given a binary blob installer that must be downloaded and run. This is no worse than Windows, mind you, except that Windows users are accustomed to it as the only method, whereas under Ubuntu there are several different methods users must learn.
Just what exactly are you trying to run off of your flash drive?
All sorts of things, from specialized browsers to front ends for a remote ticket management service to a preferred word processor.
Obviously software in Windows that is designed to run without having to actually be installed is designed that way. If the author of a program for Ubuntu wants their program to run without being installed, all they have to do is, again, design it that way.
Right, so a developer for Ubuntu just needs to write a specific version of their application for removable media and network drives, or rely upon very expert users to configure their software to run that way, and install a different version for each platform and hope the user knows what the specific platform of every machine they use it on is and they have enough free space to install those multiple copies. You don't think that is more than a little cumbersome compared to simply being able to put any application on it and run it without having to know anything but the OS you're using?
You don't see this because the demand just isn't there.
Sure there is, mobilefirefox, for example. You just don't see it much because it's hard to do and because there's a significant barrier when you need a specialized version of the program just for a particular use.
And as for commercial programs, what's hard to install?
A lot of things are hard to install and/or easy to install but then bypass the repository and package manager entirely leading to user confusion, security messiness, and multiple services performing the same task but for different apps.
That's fine and that's your choice. However, like you said, this functionality is integrated into Ubuntu so there isn't really an argument there.
Except of course it's integrated into Ubuntu in a way that is incompatible with most other Linux distros let alone OS's, so it is simply not used. Further, it's build into Ubuntu in a way that currently is not satisfactory for most commercial software offerings and so is not used for them.
Canonical is taking this task very seriously, the first phase being the Software Store in version 9.10. Package management should be iPhone easy. I imagine it will be.
I hope so. My point was mostly that right now, it does not work very well for real world use cases. Further, because the subset of users of just Ubuntu Linux is so small, a lot more needs to be done to motivate developers to use it, including getting buy in for a single system that could work on all Linux distros and potentially OS X or Windows. Finally, developers and users need to pay attention and lend support when someone comes up with real improvements, like support for multiple platforms from the get go to improve all the use cases where currently Linux is failing in the real world.
Huh? How do you use a package manager for finding new apps?
You browse through or search the descriptions of the packages in the package manager.
Also, my experience has been that in Mac OSX (admittedly, tiger), applications do not automatically clean up their files in Application\ Support. In any case, it's inefficient to have every program written for mac osx expected to do that on its own;
Amen.
The actual act of downloading and installing software, once you have determined what you want, is MUCH easier on a package manager than via the world wide web.
Ideally a link of the Web should start your package manager downloading and installing a program. Having to go from a Web browser or IRC client, then enter the same package into a package manager to find it is an extra step that is not ideal.
Compare this to the mac osx method. You want a new audio player which can play flac (something there is a hilarious lack of on mac, I might add.) You do some googling and find one called "Cog" which is abandonware in alpha stages, but it might work well enough to play that new album you got off of demonoid.
That's funny. When I wanted to play a FLAC file I just did a Google search, found one of several Quicktime Components that could handle it, and dumped it into my Library and suddenly several of my music playing applications handled them just fine, including iTunes.
Admittedly I blew it a little out of proportion, but there are still a significantly larger number of steps involved than just "sudo apt-get install cog" and "sudo apt-get purge cog".
Yeah that's great and all, but it ignores all the software that apt can't handle, which ships as a binary installer for Linux or where you don't know the name of the package or what what repository it is in or which is not in any repository. Don't get me wrong; I think package managers are the way to go, but only when you can get them working well enough so that they can handle all your software and you're not juggling multiple install/uninstall methods from multiple interfaces. I installed some software under Ubuntu the other day and documented it is part of a usability study. 18 command line entries were required to install and run an OSS program, some dependencies of which were in repositories and some of which were not. In no one location did I find all the steps required for installing it and uninstalling it was performed by rolling back the VM because I had little hope of successfully doing so in any other way without crippling things it plugged into.
The fact that you alluded to package managers being a great way to "find" applications makes me think that you don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps you're used to the Add/Remove Programs thing on ubuntu; I would never use that as a way of seriously determining what application I want.
Ahh, but that and Google are the two places a normal user is likely to go. I'd note Ubuntu is replacing the package managers with a single unified one that is eventually intended to handle buying and installing commercial software as well.