🚀 go-pugleaf

As everyone knows, big corporations have lawyers, if for no other
reason to scare off the lawyers at other big corporations and to
squash pesky little corporations that don't have lawyers.
Now everyone knows lawyers are well paid, and sometimes they
feel it necessary to show they are earning their salary.

So with the 'Look and Feel' lawsuit settled against GEM, Apple's
lawyers had some time on their hands to change the licensing agreements
that developers must enter into to distribute their software on
boot disks for the Apple II and Macintosh.

Suppose you are with ABC Corporation, and (with apologies to Silicon Beach 
Software, Inc.) you market 'SuperDuper', and wish to license the 
System Installation Disk (System/Finder/Font/DA Mover) 
and the Printer Installation Disk (LaserWriter/ImageWriter, etc.)

Clause 9 of form TD001-112886 ('Software License Agreement') requires
that ABC place into 'a conspicuous place in the manual' this statement:

    System, Finder, ImageWriter (etc.) are copyrighted programs
    of Apple Computer, Inc. licensed to ABC Corp. to distribute for use
    only in combination with SuperDuper.  Apple Software shall not be
    copied onto another diskette (except for achive purposes) or
    into memory unless as part of the execution of SuperDuper.  When
    SuperDuper has completed execution Apple Software shall not
    be used by any other program.

This means the space devoted to boot disks is worthless for the 75%
of software buyers who own a hard disk, because: you cannot copy the 
System file or printer driver to your hard disk.

Now let's ask some questions:

  1. What does using mean?  Does this mean you cannot use a
     third-party DA from within the Finder?
  2. How does a developer that requires a particular System version
     distribute it?  Suppose SuperDuper requires > 800K of disk
     space to work properly; the application is 600K.  Now suppose
     that it requires System 4.9 or Laserwriter 3.7 to work without
     crashing.  Does he tell his hard disk customers (95% of his
     revenue base) that they must boot from the floppy each time?
  3. Is this due to an administrative/technical problem that Apple
     hasn't gotten around to fixing, that of some programmers
     distributing flaky pre-release system software that crashes
     on users?  You could ban developers from shipping pre-release
     system software...
  4. Did they find a loophole that prohibited you from taking your
     System file from Apple to an Atari or a Japanese Mac, but didn't
     prohibit the use of your Microsoft-supplied one?
  5. Does Apple have plans to develop a channel for distributing
     System/Finder updates for those people who rely on
     software developers for new system disks?  As I'm sure
     many people will attest, there are many Apple dealers to
     do something as non-remunerative as copy a new system file
     for some chintzy one-time customer?
  6. Perhaps Apple plans on selling their System/Finder in the future,
     say in conjunction with the rumored 'Juggler' project.  This means
     that even more users will be using old, obsolete system software
     with known bugs than today.
  7. Does anyone have a plan to enforce this?  (on the users, not the
     developers...)  I mean, in a country with a few 100,000 pirated
     copies of copy-protected Lotus 1-2-3, what's the chance of these
     statements having a meaningful effect.

Just thought I'd warn all you users, so you don't commit a felony
tomorrow.  :-)
-- 
	Joel West
	{ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!jww	(ihnp4!gould9!joel if I ever fix news)
	jww@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu	if you must