🚀 go-pugleaf

> The size and modified dates vary as fonts and DA's are changed.

You mean that you've changed the desk accessories in your downloaded copy of
the System?  Don't you know that that's a no-no, and that now that you have
violated the license, you must destroy all your copies of the software?

> If I give Joe Blow a copy and he is allowed to give Jane Doe a copy the
> software is no longer distributed by Apple and therefore may be considered
> in unlimited distribution.

But you *are* allowed to give Joe Blow a copy, and Jow Blow *is* allowed to
give Jane Doe a copy under the current arrangement.  You and Joe Blow have to
destroy your copies, but note that it *is* possible to get a legal copy by
some means other than directly downloading the "known true" Apple software.
So is not the current policy subject to the same sort of attack?

> It all doesn't matter.  Apple owns the software, they have made what they,
> the owner of the software, consider safe distribution policy.

Yes, they own the software, and so they probably have the legal right to jerk
us all around.  Very few computer systems are sold so that the hardware or OS
vendor doesn't have the legal right to jerk the users around.  But anyone who
exercises such a legal right violates a trust implicit in the original sale--
do you know anyone who would buy a computer if they were told that they would
be jerked around on future OS releases?

> *I* *KNOW* that the system/finder that *I* got from Compuserve is good.  If
> I were to violate my license and give it to someone,

You could give it to them without violation by destroying all your copies
(assuming that you haven't violated it already by using the Font/DA Mover
to do anything more than look at sizes of fonts and DAs in the System).

> there is no way they could know that to the same degree.  If they then gave
> it to someone what would they know about the pedigree of the software?
> *NOTHING*!!!

True, quite true, but note that there is nothing that will really prevent that
in the current "agreement".  Yes, there is a prohibition against modifying the
software, but how do you really **know** that the person who transferred their
only copy to you didn't secretly violate the license by modifying the System?

> I think Apple's policy is a SAFE one, perhaps overly cautious, but in no
> way deserves to be called Fascist.

I hope you like the set of fonts and DAs that came installed, and never feel
the need to use another font or desk accessory, or to install a driver for a
hard disk (or other SCSI device), or to use more than one Mac regularly. . .

                                        -- Thomas Newton