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I was just reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_RDOS#Antitrust_lawsuit which discusses Digidyne v. Data General:

When Data General introduced the Data General Nova, a company called Digidyne wanted to use its RDOS operating system on its own hardware clone. Data General refused to license their software and claimed their "bundling rights". […]. The precedent set by the lower courts eventually forced Data General to license the operating system because restricting the software to only Data General's hardware was an illegal tying arrangement.

But then at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackintosh#Legal_issues_and_Apple%E2%80%99s_objections

The macOS EULA forbids installations of macOS on a "non-Apple-branded computer".

Am I missing something? - Why does this precedent not make hackint0shes legal?

A T
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In Digidyne v. Data General, the court ruled that tying software (RDOS) to specific hardware (Nova) violated antitrust laws because Data General had sufficient market power in the software market to force customers into the tied arrangement, constituting an illegal tying arrangement.

Courts have not conclusively found Apple to hold monopolistic power in either the macOS or hardware markets. Without such power, tying arrangements are less likely to violate antitrust laws

jqning
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Right now, Apple isn’t selling MacOS at all. They give no guarantee that it would work on any, or on many non-Apple computers, and Apple doesn’t license it. Without a license you are not allowed to make copies, and the DMCA has some extra penalties. So what you need is to get a license.

For that, someone would have to take apple to court, and ask the judge to force apple to license MacOS. At a reasonable cost. For a reasonable cost, you’d need to check what say Microsoft charges, what cost apple would have by having to sell to a much smaller number of customers, by doing adequate testing on a huge number of different computers, with different hardware components, how to make it all secure. So that would be some major cost per copy. And a judge might say that apple shouldn’t be forced to do this if nobody buys it. And then you’d have to pay the court cost.

Now if Dell decided to sell MacOS on just three different models, with some nine digit guaranteed sales number, they might have a chance. You would still not have a license for your computer.

gnasher729
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