Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/04/07/proprietary-licenses.html

There are lots of evil things that proprietary software companies might
do. Companies put their own profit above the rights and freedoms of
their users, and to that end, much can be done that subjugates
users. Even as someone who avoids proprietary software, I still read
many proprietary license agreements (mainly to see how bad they are).
I’ve certainly become numb to the constant barrage of horrible
restrictions they place on users. But, sometimes, proprietary licenses
go so far that I’m taken aback by their gratuitous cruelty.

Apple’s licenses are probably the easiest example of proprietary
licensing terms that are well beyond reasonableness. Of course, Apple’s
licenses do the usual things like forbidding users from copying,
modifying, sharing, and reverse engineering the software. But even
worse, Apple also forbid users from running Apple software on any
hardware that is not produced by Apple.

The decoupling of one’s hardware vendor from one’s software vendor was
a great innovation brought about by the PC revolution, in which,
ironically, Apple played a role. Computing history has shown us that when
your software vendor also controls your hardware, you can easily be
“locked in“ in ways that make mundane proprietary software
licenses seem almost nonthreatening.

Indeed, Apple has such a good hype machine that
they even
have convinced some users this restrictive policy makes computing
better. In this worldview, the paternalistic vendor will use its
proprietary controls over as many pieces of the technology as possible
to keep the infantile users from doing something that’s “just bad
for them”. The tyrannical
MCP
of Tron comes quickly to my mind.

I’m amazed that so many otherwise Free Software supporters are quite
happy using OSX and buying Apple products, given these kinds of utterly
unacceptable policies. The scariest part, though, is that this practice
isn’t confined to Apple. I’ve been recently reminded that other
companies, such
as IBM, do exactly the same thing. As a Free Software advocate, I’m
critical of any company that uses their control of a proprietary
software license to demand that users run that software only on the
original company’s hardware as well. The production and distribution of
mundane proprietary software is bad enough. It’s unfortunate that
companies like Apple and IBM are going the extra mile to treat users
even worse.