Anyone who has been involved with the "forbidden" osx86 scene, or the ability to run Mac OS X on generic PC hardware, likely knows the name netkas. Netkas created the EFI firmware emulator that brings the osx86 distribution of OS X closer to the real thing by emulating the EFI Apple uses in their modern hardware. EFI is Intel's replacement for BIOS, closely resembling OpenFirmware, that allows both the interface to hardware from the software layer as well as providing direction and configuration for said hardware. The EFI emulation layer has opened the doors for more graphics hardware support, booting from GUID Partition Table hard disks, and more. It also allows osx86 users with compatible hardware (Intel chipsets and Core Solos or higher) to use Apple's OS X kernel, rather than waiting for a hacked and patched version from the community.
A company called Psystar recently exploded into the news by openly announcing a commercially sold "hackintosh". They're offering what is essentially a white box PC, with off the shelf parts that match or closely match what Apple is offering in their hardware, pre-installed with Mac OS X 10.5. Their sales pitch is that they're effectively selling an expandable Mac, with more power than an iMac, for less than half the cost. They're bundling a legal copy of Leopard, the Netkas EFI v8 emulator, and Apple's bundled software, as a complete package. It's a license violation to do this, as Apple's EULA specifically forbids using Leopard on hardware that is not Apple-branded.
The funny part to this story is that Netkas is all pissed off that Psystar is using his EFI emulator in a commercial product. He has since re-released EFI v8 with a new license forbidding the use of the software for commercial purposes. Now, if anyone just noticed that, Netkas is pissed off that Psystar is violating his license agreement by bundling software that allows people to violate Apple's license agreement.
Right, then.
