
OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English - dogweather
http://robb.weblaws.org/2015/10/17/os-x-el-capitan-license-in-plain-english/
======
anjbe
I think there’s a lot to be said for a license that’s so simple it doesn’t
need a summary. For example, take the ISC license:

“Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose
with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright
notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

“The software is provided ‘as is’ and the author disclaims all warranties with
regard to this software including all implied warranties of merchantability
and fitness. In no event shall the author be liable for any special, direct,
indirect, or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from
loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or
other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use or
performance of this software.”

Yes, there are a lot of things it doesn’t cover. There’s no copyleft in this
license, and no restriction on commercial use, and so on. Some will argue the
problems with that, but it’s also a strength—because the license does less,
explaining these concepts is unnecessary, and the resulting license text is
much simpler.

There aren’t that many licenses like that. Even Creative Commons summary pages
state: “This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the
license. This deed highlights only some of the key features and terms of the
actual license. It is not a license and has no legal value. You should
carefully review all of the terms and conditions of the actual license before
using the licensed material.” Who actually does that? But it seems dangerous
not to.

    
    
        $ wc -w * | sort -n
             60 wtfpl
            118 isc
            140 zlib
            167 mit
            190 unlicense
            207 bsd
           1055 cc0
           1234 lgpl3
           2487 gpl2
           2699 cc-by
           3111 cc-by-sa
           4025 lgpl2.1
           5174 agpl3
           5209 gpl3
          25876 total

~~~
jordigh
Shortness of a license should not be a goal in itself. The GPL is long because
without its length we would not have everyone pitching in patches to Linux or
gcc for all different architectures. I know non-copyleft licensed software
also gets collaboration, but Linux's and gcc's near universal hardware support
seems to require the coercion of copyleft. Without copyleft, we would never
have had any sort of free Objective C compiler either, and I'm still waiting
for Apple to do good on their promise to free up Swift.

Also, unlike EULAs, the GPL is _meant_ to be understood. Have you read it? It
is long, but without reaching EULA lengths, and it's written with clear
definitions and a language that aims for clarity. It was written by hackers
_and_ lawyers. If you're having trouble understanding it, there's a FAQ:

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
faq.html)

Apple doesn't publish EULA FAQs, as they do not want widespread public
understanding of each item in their EULA.

~~~
kec
As a counterpoint, netbsd has a permissive (3 clause bsd) license and the
slogan "of course it runs netbsd". Copyleft definitely isn't required for
universal hardware support.

------
liquidise
This was both insightful and highlights, i would argue, an unmet need. I would
love simple write ups like this for specific software licenses.

In theory, tldrlegal.com is positioned to take this on, but in my experience
they tend to deal with more pervasive licenses like MIT, GNU, etc.

~~~
burnte
I always include a "plain english" copy of my contracts when I send them to
customers. I state that it's there for reference only, not a substitute for a
lawyer on their part, but that I've made the best effort to make it
representative of the contract. Most of my client love it, some don't care,
but I think it's something that has helped a lot of folks. I think most
contracts should have one.

~~~
querious
Should there be an intermediary the client needs to sign that the summary
isn't a perfect representation of the contract? Kidding, of course. Mostly.

~~~
burnte
No, because the signatory parties are still responsible for knowing what their
signing anyway. If the summary was significantly different than the contents,
then one MIGHT have an argument a judge could agree with, but in general, if
you sign it, then you better have read it because you agreed to it, summary or
no.

------
joosters
I don't understand how practically all commercial software can get away with
claiming that it isn't fit or warranted for any purpose. Apple's product demos
and website advertise the OS performing lots of different tasks. If I bought a
Mac and found I couldn't use it to browse the web or store photos, surely
Apple's marketing is direct proof that they are warranting that it should be
able to do these things?

~~~
gilgoomesh
Nothing like that appears in the plain text license here. Are you reading it
from somewhere else?

In any case, almost all warranty disclaimers start with "TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT
PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW" which, under consumer laws in most countries,
requires the company to provide a product that can work as shown in all its
advertising materials.

~~~
goldmar
> In any case, almost all warranty disclaimers start with "TO THE MAXIMUM
> EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW"

Which is an invalid clause in Germany and probably most other European
countries. Any clause that goes beyond the extent permitted by the applicable
law is automatically void in Germany. This is due to consumer protection laws.
Therefore, most of these EULAs are probably void if it ever comes to law
suit...

~~~
FireBeyond
Is it actually? Because this is basically saying, "these are the conditions.
if all or part of these conditions extend beyond the applicable law, then only
the part that is within the law is applicable".

------
acd
Legal agreements was used to be a agreement between two parties where an equal
agreement was reached. EULA tends to be one sided agreements where the company
take away your rights.

"I gotta run it on Apple hardware (no Hackintoshes). I can’t help anyone else
do that."

Isnt help anyone else doing that taking away your legal right of free speech?

I have also seen agreements where the company says you may not publicly
mention any security holes that you find in their software. Does a company
have the right to take away your free speech in their license agreements? Have
this been tried in the highest court?

~~~
lambada
"Isnt help anyone else doing that taking away your legal right of free
speech?"

Not in the US at least. In the US the legal right only prevents the government
making laws that abridge them. It doesn't prohibit any private person or
company from limiting speech in any way they like.

~~~
randallsquared
> limiting speech in any way they like.

...that you agree to. In theory. And originally, only the federal government
was so limited; states could and did have laws that would have been in
violation of the first amendment, had the federal government instituted them.

------
gurkendoktor
> Slideshows made with Photo; same deal, don’t even think about using them for
> some commercial purpose.

??? Was Apple too cheap to buy the proper license for the default slideshow
music? That sounds completely arbitrary and unexpected. (I doubt anyone will
ever enforce this rule, but why is it there?)

~~~
deckiedan
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407399)
may have more to do with it.

------
demarq
Its weird that we do this dance, no one reads the terms and we if we ever have
to choose between the agreement and our immediate need well... If a client
needs you to spin up a vm but you're already running two who gives a rat's
behind!

------
tajen
"I can't use El Captain with illegal copies of anyone's stuff" or break any
local law. In which case I must delete everything.

Do you think Apple is required to write this? or is it just lawyers maxing out
on the possibilities of licensing?

~~~
746F7475
I guess it's more about Apple washing their hands, like if someone uses a Mac
to plan a bombing or hack into something, no matter what happens no one can
point a finger at Apple.

It's a long shot, but it's same kind of thing when your microwave says "it's
not suitable for drying living animal"

~~~
tajen
The microwave is interestingly slightly different, it doesn't disown you. It's
more like a cascading penalty: Say if you do something wrong in the house,
then the house doesn't belong to you anymore. It's far fetched to accuse Apple
in case of bombing, although we've seen anything in the US jurisdicting; as
far fetched as it is to disown someone of their computer if they pirated an
ebook (which has already happened with Amazon Kindle).

~~~
746F7475
I think that "you are just loaning our software" will become (or is) defacto
standard, say Apple discontinues iTunes, they can just remove it and no one
can sue them because the lost their MP3 library because they were just loaning
the content in the first place.

Another company that does the same is Valve with Steam, you do not own any of
the games you have in your library, you just have momentary right to play them
and if, say, Valve goes bankrupt and Steam just vanishes from the Internet you
have no right to complain that you can't play your games anymore.

It's just to cover their asses so some nutjob doesn't find a loophole and milk
them for half their worth.

------
Narishma
> I gotta follow all my local laws while I’m using it. (!) (Really? Whereever
> I live?)

Where I live, a lot of those rules conflict with local law.

~~~
rogeryu
Well then, it's quite simple, but then local law overrules Apple law. And
Apple is nice enough to let you know this.

------
noonespecial
So we're at the point now that legal documents need comments to be human
readable. I wonder how long it will be until they look like perl.

~~~
hmahncke
One company -
[http://www.legalese.io/turing.html](http://www.legalese.io/turing.html) \- is
working on this, perhaps inspired by Charles Stross' comments on this idea.

~~~
phyllostachys
Oh man! I was thinking about the whole legal language should be something of a
formal language a little less than a year ago. I'm glad someone is doing
something along those lines.

------
snorrah
"I can’t sell access to my Mac via any kind of screen sharing."

This one was interesting to me. I thought maybe macminicolo.net might fall
foul of this, if they rented out a mac mini to you, but it looks like they
instead make you straight-up purchase a mac mini.
[http://www.macminicolo.net/jvmx_secure_signup.html](http://www.macminicolo.net/jvmx_secure_signup.html)

I wonder if this term/condition was in previous OSX releases and that's why
they went this way, or whether it was a happy accident that they went with
users purchasing a mac rather than renting one.

~~~
hobarrera
[http://www.macincloud.com/](http://www.macincloud.com/) is similar, though it
seems they rent you a mac per hour, so they're not technically giving you
access to their mac: you're accessing the mac you rented.

------
idlewords
Somebody buy this person a beer

------
danr4
Nice read. You should do more of these.

It would be great to have a site for crowdsourced EULA explanations of this
sort.

~~~
dogweather
Thanks! I never expected that so many people would want to see this.

So now I'm brainstorming about the best way to publish more of these, enable
crowd sourcing, and get other lawyers involved.

------
archmikhail
Wow, that was really not as bad as I thought.

~~~
tymekpavel
_" I cannot, don’t even think about it, just plain can’t, make money from
MPEG/H.264/AVC videos I create. For that, I need to buy another something from
somebody."_

This was pretty surprising to me. Why does Apple not allow making money from
MPEG videos that you create? Does this include uploading them to YouTube?

~~~
threeseed
It is to do with MPEG-LA licensing.

Apple and Microsoft licensed the H.264 codecs for content creation which is a
per user cost. They know this based on how many downloads. Users who sell
their videos need to pay MPEG-LA a license per view which Apple/Microsoft
can't determine. Hence you are on your own.

[http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-
Ar...](http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-
Articles/The-H.264-Licensing-Labyrinth-65403.aspx)

~~~
dogweather
Thanks, this is a good explanation of the "why".

------
togusa
Versus BSD:

Whatever, just remember we wrote it and if it fucks up, don't blame us.

~~~
yxdfasdjkljasdf
Which is what Apple's license says, but with a bunch of additional terms
unfavorable for the user and without access to the source code.

~~~
togusa
No it says nothing of the sort.

~~~
yxdfasdjkljasdf
Judging from the article it does:

The author is clearly Apple and they are not responsible just as in the BSD
license:

 _The Capitan is AS-IS, of course._

Unlike BSD, there is no source and a bunch of other very restrictive
limitations, which is what I was commenting about.

 _1\. I can’t use the Capitan with illegal copies of anyone’s stuff.

2\. Apple didn’t sell me this software. They still own it, in fact. I’m just
borrowing it.

3\. If I install more Apple software, those are on loan as well.

..._

And so on.

~~~
togusa
They place restrictive rights on the usage of the software and retain the
ability to revoke your license. BSD does not, ergo it is different.

~~~
hobarrera
I'm not sure if this is also true in the US, but the ability to revoke a
licence is implicit by law in many places - though the revoker may be liable
for any losses caused by the revocation.

------
ck2
Why is Sudan of all places singled out and not like North Korea or Iran?

Or was that just reduced for brevity.

~~~
jnpatel
In the comments of the original article, the author mentions this condition
applies to any country on the embargoed list [0] (which includes Sudan).

0:
[http://www.pmddtc.state.gov/embargoed_countries/](http://www.pmddtc.state.gov/embargoed_countries/)

------
msravi
> Apple didn’t sell me this software. They still own it, in fact. I’m just
> borrowing it.

Does this also apply to older versions of OS X that are actually paid for
(such as Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion)? Or is this only for the "free"
versions like Yosemite and El Capitan?

~~~
dchest
It applies to pretty much _all_ software: you're licensing it, not buying.

~~~
Silhouette
Though it's actually a very bad summary in this particular case. If you've
paid real money for a permanent copy of some software then in many
jurisdictions you do effectively own _that copy_ of the software. In those
places, there may be quite severe restrictions on what the copyright holder
can then restrict you from doing with your copy, even though they retain the
main rights to the software itself, and in some cases there have been lawsuits
which have made it to court and upheld limitations on the rightsholders'
powers.

Even where there used to be potential distinctions between physical copies and
things you acquired in purely digital form such as on-line downloads, the law
is catching up in a lot of places. It's just doing so painfully slowly
compared to the pace of development of technology, and sometimes with a few
accidental/deliberate (delete as applicable) loopholes written into the newer
laws that still seem rather favourable to copyright holders and the like.

~~~
Joeri
They'll still put it in for the jurisdictions that it's valid, or maybe just
as a chilling effect. I've signed an employment contract before which
contained clauses that were invalid under the law (non-compete and also forced
repayment of mandatory training when you leave too soon after), and when the
employer was asked whether they knew they were invalid, they admitted they
did. Those clauses were only enforceable to people who didn't know any better,
and apparently that was sufficient reason to have them in there.

~~~
Silhouette
Yes, this is an all-too-common tactic with legalese. I assume that's why in
some places even including certain provisions in a consumer contract or
failing to advertise certain information about consumer rights is in itself
against the law now.

------
stanley
Can anyone explain the Sudan thing?

~~~
dogweather
The prohibition is against sending it to any “embargoed country”. Sudan is on
the list:
[http://www.pmddtc.state.gov/embargoed_countries/](http://www.pmddtc.state.gov/embargoed_countries/)

~~~
tomsmeding
Funny, China seems to be on the list too... Or am I interpreting that list
incorrectly?

~~~
X-Istence
China is indeed on that list, however to understand what you may or may not
export to China you will have to read all of the relevant laws, which may or
may not be the same as those for any other country.

------
suneilp
If I'm just 'borrowing' El Capitan, then that means the copy I'm running
belongs to them. Therefore, any intellectual property I develop using my copy
could technically belong to them?

~~~
x5n1
Come to Linux my brother, heed the call of salvation!

~~~
suneilp
X Windows has traumatized me in the past.

~~~
fernandotakai
it got a lot better. on my archlinux install (on a macbook), the only thing
that did not work out of the box was wifi (i had to install proprietary
broadcom drivers).

other than that, everything is fine and dandy. and it boots a _lot_ faster
than osx ever did.

~~~
hobarrera
Yup, indeed, running Arch on a 2013 MBA here. It's been a pleasure so far.
Installing the broadcom driver was a breeze, and never had any issues.

------
weinzierl
"I’ve got to read the separate rules that came with the fonts, and obey them.
(I can only borrow those too.)"

Thanks for writing this. It would be great to have the font licenses in plain
English too.

------
andersthue
There outh to two sets of license agreements with all software, the legalese
one and one like this - then I might actually read it.

I'll add one like this to my software now!

------
moe
English isn't really a better exchange format for licenses than legalese.
Arguably it's even worse due to the lossy conversion.

What we really need is a common legal markup language[1]. Sadly, the few
efforts that I've heard about seem to be stagnating.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_XML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_XML)

~~~
jzwinck
The problem with legal markup is the same as with FIX, the financial data
protocol (which is widely used).

Lawyers (finance people) will never stop innovating (increasing complexity),
and they will not be one moment delayed by a protocol which falls short of
their aspirations for sophistication (bamboozling). Therefore, the only
adoptable protocols are mere transports. They might rigidly specify some
commonly used things like property titles (stock orders) but foreseeing
unusual or unknown requirements, such protocols will include custom extension
features (user defined fields).

The end result is a protocol which is sort of useful but still does not
suffice for the development of generic tooling. An example from FIX is the
field which tells whether an order added or removed liquidity. The standard
didn't have such a field, so now every exchange has its own different one.

~~~
moe
I don't really see that as a problem, that's how all popular protocols evolve.

If all exchanges have invented a liquidity-field, then there's a good chance
the next version of FIX will standardize it, no?

Imho the legal system is very much ripe for digitalization. Both on the low-
end (where it pretty much _consists_ of overhead), and even more so on the
high-end, where the complexity of legal contracts between companies or states
has long exceeded what any team of lawyers (much less a mere mortal) can
comprehend.

~~~
jzwinck
The next version of FIX can try, but everyone stopped upgrading FIX versions
years ago. Also, once you standardize the liquidity field, you need to think
about its values. These expand continuously...it used to be two or three
values, now some systems use a dozen or more.

Basically, if you want a protocol for legal documents, you may as well use an
existing one, such as PDF, XLS, TeX, etc. Trying to embed more domain
knowledge in the protocol will never work at a highly generalized level. It
would be like asking HTTP to standardize e-commerce.

~~~
moe
Well, let's not forget we're talking about lawyers here, who already work with
a versioned single source of truth (The Law).

All I'm asking is that we upgrade their tooling and process.

Your outlook for the abstraction potential seems overly pessimistic.

Most of Law boils down to a cascade of intermingled conditionals, nothing a
computer couldn't handle.

Of course a bit of human intervention will always be required, for value
judgements and the "hard questions".

However, in my (limited) experience with lawyers, very little of the time and
money that a lawsuit consumes goes into the actual decision making.

The overwhelming majority is wasted on process and formalities.

~~~
reagency
There is no single source of truth. Every court case creates a new version of
kaw, called case law.

~~~
moe
Well, the body of this case law (and all other laws) is what I refer to as
"single source of truth".

Yes, "single source" is very much an euphemism.

In practice it's far from a single source, but rather a poorly synchronized
mess. Which is exactly what I'm proposing to fix.

If we were to wrap it into a github-style model then cases could be
represented as branches. Case-law would evolve in the form of patches and
pull-requests.

------
wtallis
IIRC, #7 about the voice synthesizers appeared with 10.6. Prior to that, there
was no mention of the voices in the license and commercial use of narrations
produced with the system's voice synthesizer might have been legal.

~~~
joosters
That's bizarre, especially since as far as I can tell, the voice synthesizer
hasn't been improved in years. (the command 'say hello' sounds something like
'yellow' to my ears)

~~~
pidg
I can only think of one commercial track that uses the voice synth - Cow Cud
is a Twin by Aphex Twin[1] uses the 'Hysterical' and 'Bells' voices.

And those aren't "remixed" \- they're used straight - which makes me wonder
what the full license terms are (I agreed blindly and can't find a copy of the
license now...)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbOqgWifXgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbOqgWifXgU)

~~~
dogweather
Here's the license text:

[http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1011.pdf](http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1011.pdf)

> F. Voices. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you may use
> the system voices included in the Apple Software (“System Voices”) (i) while
> running the Apple Software and (ii) to create your own original content and
> projects for your personal, non-commercial use. No other use of the System
> Voices is permitted by this License, including but not limited to the use,
> reproduction, display, performance, recording, publishing or redistribution
> of any of the System Voices in a profit, non-profit, public sharing or
> commercial context.

So while you _can_ be creative with these in private, you better not share it
with anyone. I wanted to sum it up simply, and decided that _no remixing_
probably captured the spirit of this well.

------
Maarten88
I did not read anything about installing Windows on Apple hardware and then
running OSX Capitan in a virtual machine. Is that really allowed?

~~~
wila
This is a question I see pop up every now and then, it was never legal, but I
just looked it up again.

Unfortunately, no, that's not allowed, your host OS must be an apple supplied
OS.

See also [1] and here's the excerpt:

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of
the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac
Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software

[1]
[http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1011.pdf](http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1011.pdf)

~~~
hobarrera
Technically, you can install windows, iTunes, and then an OS X VM. That would
seem to comply with the "is already running Apple Software".

Or did I miss something?

~~~
wila
Yes, you really need to read it in context "The Apple Software" here is a
reference to earlier and is meant to be an apple operating system in this case
El Capitan, although they extend it a bit.

The quote was shortened by me for brevity.

If you want a bit more context here's the slightly longer version of the
quote:

.....you are granted a limited, non-transferable, nonexclusive license:

(i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one
(1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running
OS X Yosemite, OS X Mavericks, OS X Mountain Lion, OS X Lion or OS X Snow
Leopard (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;

(ii) If you are a commercial enterprise or educational institution, to
download, install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software for use
either: (a) by a single individual on each of the Mac Computer(s) that you own
or control, or (b) by multiple individuals on a single shared Mac Computer
that you own or control. For example, a single employee may use the Apple
Software on both the employee’s desktop Mac Computer and laptop Mac Computer,
or multiple students may serially use the Apple Software on a single Mac
Computer located at a resource center or library; and

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of
the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac
Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for
purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software
development; (c) using OS X Server; or (d) personal, noncommercial use.

------
gcb0
i always want to have free time just to break that and test how the old-apple
"sosumi" bravado affects now-apple in court.

------
cooper12
Does anyone know if #10 changed in El Capitan? I remember reading that Apple
allowed hackintoshes.

~~~
dogweather
I never heard about Apple allowing hackintoshes.

The thing they DID begin to allow at some point is OS X running in a VM, on
Apple host hardware, I believe.

~~~
MichaelGG
Well they allowed others to sell Mac-compatibles, like PCs. But that was quite
a while ago and not hackintosh.

