[OpenBIOS] [PATCH] add copyright message to root node at startup

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

On 05/02/16 12:49, BALATON Zoltan wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Feb 2016, Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
>> If you look back at the archives, the concern is whether or not having
>> an Apple copyright string visible in the source and at runtime could
>> cause legal issues with OpenBIOS and ultimately QEMU.
>>
>> Realistically I don't think Apple could care that much, but without
>> confirmation from Apple themselves (and the fact that this could also
>> affect QEMU) then I'd much rather take the safe option.
> 
> I have no idea about legal things either but if at the end the copyright
> string becomes visible in the device tree, however it's put there, does
> it change anything if it's plain text or obfuscated in the source? It
> would still be there only obfuscated. Wouldn't adding a different string
> that's enough to make the OS happy but saying "not copyright Apple" that
> was also suggested be better to clearly show why it's there but avoid
> problems by having a false copyright notice?

Yeah, that's kind of how we ended up with what we have at the moment. In
what we've seen so far (i.e. OS 9), the check isn't exact but that's not
to say that all versions will be the same. The obfuscation was really a
safeguard so that if we have to include the message verbatim moving
forward then it's still not visible in the source.

> As legal things are, they could sew someone anyway just for trying to
> use MacOS on non-Apple hardware which is probably not allowed by its
> license so maybe the copyright message would not cause much more problems.

Well probably :)  The problem here is that no-one actually knows and I'm
currently erring on the side of over-engineering outside of having any
concrete legal advice.


ATB,

Mark.