Psystar halts sales of Mac cloning tool, will peddle Linux PCs
(ComputerWorld)

It does make sense to discontinue the Rebel EFI product until Psystar can get some clarification from the courts that it can be sold legally. The one mistake Psystar made was to engage in copyright violations in regard to OS X.

And for those who think that Apple is not involved in an antitrust violation, you have to ask just one question. Would Apple care at all about Rebel EFI if they were not trying to preclude competition in the hardware marketplace for Apple compatible systems?

The point being that with Rebel EFI Apple does get paid for each copy of its OS. And that should be the only right that Apple has. GPL software is the same. Complying with the GPL is the form of payment. Restricting its use to specific hardware is not a form of payment at all.

Apple does not have the right to preclude hardware competition. That is an antitrust problem. Square on point if you will.

In the meantime, Psystar intends to market quality systems running Linux.

And that is interesting in light of the suggestion made here and I am sure elsewhere that Apple acting illegally as it clearly is, helps out the Linux marketplace.

The question you have to ask is whether a company can use the copyright laws to get a monopoly position in a hardware marketplace.

Clearly Apple wants to try and perhaps their lawyers even think they can pull it off. IBM may want to do the same with its mainframe OS. And Microsoft might be thinking about it too.

Of course, if Microsoft tried that with the PC marketplace a number of OEMs would be jumping right into court with the same antitrust claims as Psystar.

And do not think that only Microsoft would not be permitted to do such a thing.

HP has been sued for antitrust in regard to their inkjet cartridges. Does HP have a monopoly on printers? Ford was sued for antitrust in regard to its Genuine Ford Parts (it wanted to restrict sales to Ford dealers). And as I have mentioned before in years gone by, Data General was also required to sell its minicomputer OS for use with third party hardware. And that was at a time when DEC, HP and even IBM may have had greater market shares in the overall minicomputer marketplace.

It is strange that IBM, DEC or HP was not also sued and required to sell their OS for use on third party hardware. Remember the days of multiple proprietary systems? It is still here to some extent.

So what Apple wants to do is not different in any way. It is in fact an very real antitrust issue. Pure and simple.

The difference is that as I recall no one sued IBM for their Series 1 software. Or, HP for their HP 3000 software. They did sue DG. And as I recall DEC did sell their software openly for non-DEC hardware.

Interestingly enough, HP was sued or brown nosed in regard to their compilers and DBMS that originally came bundled with the HP 3000 system. Guess who complained? It was Oracle. Oracle wanted to sell its relational DBMS to HP customers and did not like the idea of all potential customers having to have already purchased the Image/Query software from HP. Sort of like the browser antitrust issue of today. Although for reasons I do not understand, Google, Opera and Mozilla have caved in and not insisted upon their legal rights to a fair and open marketplace.

Yes, I understand that Google and Mozilla may think they do not have to sell their browsers to make their economic model work. But, Opera I clearly do not understand.

Where is the browser technology from Yahoo or Adobe? They are not involved? They are certainly precluded from selling browsers. So are Google and Mozilla for that matter.

Microsoft's ongoing illegal activity continues to have adverse affects upon the industry and consumers. Yet it continues with the apparent blessing from the US DOJ and even the EU Commission. So clearly those authorities are not acting in the best interest of the industry or consumers.

Antitrust issues do in fact exist whenever you see competing products being excluded or precluded from the marketplace. Getting away with antitrust violations is not the same as saying they do not exist.