🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi All,

I have not done any research into this, so the following comments are  
off the top of my head.

My guess is that IBM was forced to unbundle because of anti-trust  
claims (i.e. they owned a very large chunk of the computer market.)   
This is not the case with Apple... they only own about 20% of the PC  
market and it is fairly clear that they do not control either the PC  
market or the windowing software market.  Also, most major packages  
that run on the Mac also run under Windows on the PC (PageMaker,  
Illustrator, Excel, MS-Word, FoxBase, Word Perfect, etc.)  So a  
person who cannot run the Mac OS can still buy lots of other machines  
and be very productive on those other machines.  I don't think that  
Apple could be forced to unbundle their software.  If they won their  
case again Microsoft (the Windows case), the argument would change.

So, you figure that you'll try it and see anyway (i.e. you've bought  
a Mac and you use Mac software (i.e. ROMs or disks) on another  
machine, claiming that you have a license to the software and Apple  
cannot restrict your reasonable use of it.)  This seems to me to be a  
stronger argument.  Apple is not losing any money because you are  
using their software on another machine.  Not only did they make the  
money for the software, they also made money from the hardware sale.   
I have not read the Apple licensing agreement, so I don't know  
exactly what is prohibited.  I wouldn't want to be the test case to  
find out if a court would uphold this clause in a licensing  
agreement.  Of course, if this is upheld, the next step is to  
restrict other kinds of use... i.e. you cannot use this software for  
illegal purposes (e.g. Apple sues stock traders after they are caught  
doing inside trading using Macs to store their information)...

Being a typical lawyer, I've given a long-winded non-answer to a  
simple question.  The short answers are:  Apple will not be forced to  
un-bundle their software because there are no anti-trust issues.   
Apple's license may or may not be enforceable.  I wouldn't want to be  
the person to find out the hard way.

David 


Begin forwarded message:

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 03:49:52 +0200
From: Edmund Ronald <eronald@cnam.cnam.fr>
To: comp-sys-next-misc@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: ARDI, Apple system software, etc.
Cc: dpp@athena.com

Many years ago, IBM was forced to "unbundle" its offerings,
and sell system software independently of the hardware.
This is what enabled Amdahl to compete with its IBM compatible
-call on Friday, be running on Monday- mainframe replacements.

This means that the "license agreement" which says you can only 

run Apple system software on Apple hardware is probably not worth
the paper its written on :)

Let's ask a lawyer for comment .

Edmund