Clearly we're not going to agree.
I can see numerous counter-arguments. Amongst these are:
1. The licence for Mac OS X Public Beta. Which is explicitly time and version-limited. Which shows that Apple are perfectly capable of specifying these matters in a licence when they choose to do so.
2. The selling of Mac OS X 10.0, and 10.1, and their server equivalents. People buying these *expected* that their money would buy useful, working operating systems - that they would "get what they paid for". That was the "spirit of the agreement", as you put it. In practice, 10.0 is so crippled as to be unusable. 10.1 is just useable as an evaluation system, but has so many limitations that I found - after extensive evaluation - that I was obliged to advise clients against any attempt to use it in a production environment. Likewise 10.1 server. Runs without falling over, but simply fails correctly to provide all the functions it claims on the box. In fairness, Apple recognised the limitations of 10.0 and provided the updates to 10.1 automatically at nominal cost. But Apple did not provide any affordable upgrade path to 10.2, which is the point where OS X became useable. This is especially galling for users of 10.1 server who find that they have shelled out serious money for an essentially unusable product, with no resale value. A quick glance at afp548 shows how completely it has been abandoned.
Don't lecture me on honesty. I have always been scrupulously honest in my procurement and allocation of software licences. My honesty has not always been rewarded by similar fair play on the part of my suppliers, who have sometimes supplied me with far less than what I paid for. There are words for this in English. "Rip-off", "con", "corporate scam" all leap to mind.
Admittedly, I'm a bit cross with Apple today, as I stare at my uncommunicative iceBook which has suffered the Black Screen of Death. To their credit, Apple have created the "Expanded iBook Logic Repair Extension Program" to deal with this catastrophic global plague, and with luck I will be covered. The projected repair time in the UK is only two months, so that's good to know (???). Thank God the back-up system (pismo) still works, and can run Tiger after the week-end.
I've heard that Dell and IBM make reliable notebooks. Maybe running Fedora on a stinkpad would make better sense than trying to keep up with OS X, for so little practical reward.
Please cite the court-cases. I would like to read them.
GWW
On Wednesday, Apr 27, 2005, at 20:14 Europe/London, David M. Ensteness wrote:
My point - to be succinct:
While you can argue and nitpick the terms looking for justifications to use a 5-pack license from 10.2 for 10.4, the spirit of the agreement does not include use for newer versions.
Its the "trying to get more than what I paid for" justification that you use which creates more legal banter and confuses the common sense of such things even further.
The fact is, no one bought Mac OS X v.10.2 Family Pack expecting that they got rights to future products and Apple never intended to imply that.
So if your argument really comes down to "look at the loop hole I found!" Great. All I am saying is its not honest because *neither* of the two parties involved in the agreement intended it.
David
On Apr 27, 2005, at 4:06 AM, Gerald Wilson wrote:
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