Honest question: has anyone ever cared for a EULA on hn except for bickering about getting Apple's poorly compatible consumer-os to run on regular consumer hardware?

I can't think if a single case.

To be honest, I don't think it is a huge issue for personal use. But when you're running a businesses then it becomes important to pay attention to software licenses. If you intend to get big enough to where you'll be audited for investment or sale, you wouldn't want to have your technology relying on improperly licensed software products.

That being said, I'm among the people who would love to run virtualized OSX.

It is not an EULA for that case. they've taken companies out in silicon valley with other claims. But that was during Jobs times. And I doubt he needed anything legal to go after anybody.

As long as it is Apple hardware, as defined by[1], then it can be run, virtualized or not. KVM runs on an OS X host and therefore this is totally acceptable.

[1]: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?langua...

Which is a real shame. It means that testing OSX software is significantly more expensive than testing software on any other popular OS due to the need for a Mac host.

Being an Apple developer is very (overly, maybe excessively?) expensive.

Well, not really. It is a popular argument though.

if you must buy special hardware just to compile code, well... that's not normal for any other eco-system's developers. Nor is having to pay for the privilege of being a developer... nor pay for dev tools, etc.

You don't have to pay for dev tools (Xcode is free). You only have to pay if you want to distribute through the App Store or, for iOS, test on a device.

But I already own a mac, and it's fantastic hardware that I can do development for anything on, and the dev tools for OS X are free.

But you can't pay a fraction of a cent per hour to run your unit or integration tests for every commit unless you set up the infrastructure to do so yourself.

Though now that travis-ci has beta support for osx, this is changing. But probably at a much greater cost and complexity than it could have without the VM restriction on the license.

Not true.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?langua...

Actually, it is:

> The grant set forth in Section 2B(iii) above does not permit you to use the virtualized copies or instances of the Apple Software in connection with service bureau, time-sharing, terminal sharing or other similar types of services.

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX109.pdf

In the same PDF, actually in the section 2B(iii) you are refering to:

"If you obtained a license for the Apple Software from the Mac App Store, (...) you are granted a (...) license (...) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments (...)".

So "No OSX version allows for virtualizing it as a guest VM" looks like an incorrect statement to me. Instead, some OSX versions DO seem to allow for virtualizing as a guest VM, under some conditions.

Hmm, appears you are correct.

Previous versions just flat-out banned any sort of virtualization.

Appears this release now allows you to have up-to 2 OSX guests running ontop of an OSX host.

(A pathetic attempt at allowing virtualization imho, my Xen hosts at the office have 10-30 guests running concurrently per box)

Well, it's not completely unreasonable given that Apple is in the business of selling hardware. Of course they want you to buy macs. :)

In all my years, and colo'ed across 3 DC's... I have yet to see any OSX server hardware besides a mac mini...

There are a few companies that host Mac VPS instances, and the one I used back in 2011 was running on XServe's using what looked like a bare metal VMWare solution (Parallels had one too I believe). Rare even back then though, Mini's are definitely more common.

You don't even need it to be an OS X host, only Apple hardware. VMware allows you to install OS X on ESXi hosts that run on Mac mini or Mac Pro (but disables that functionality on all non-Apple hardware).

In sensible countries the EULAs don't have any legal value.

The requirement, if you actually read it, is only that the metal must be from Apple.

(just pointing it out) :P

This is false. Since Lion (I think it was), the wording allows installation of up to 2 additional copies as VMs, provided the underlying hardware is a Apple/Mac.

The mystery around the Hypervisor API in Yosemite is even more intriguing then.