[OT] - Downloadable Mac OS

[yellowdog-newbie at lists.terrasoftsolutions.com]

The Mac OS EULA will not be much different from Windows' EULA!

It is true that each Beige G3 machine shipped with Mac OS 8.0 or 8.1
but without the actual media I'd say you are on the wrong side of the
licencing problem. You CANNOT (legally) swap one version of the OS for
another without actually having the physical media that goes along
with the other OS!

There are some minor version variations which are effectively the same
software licence. You can upgrade (at no cost and with no licence
restriction) from:
8.0 to 8.1
8.5 to 8.6
9.0 to 9.2.2

If you need to pick up cheap copies of OS 8, I'm sure you could find
them at the 'swap list' run by www.lowendmac.com or on eBay (cheaper
to go the lowendmac.com route I imagine unless you could buy a batch
on eBay).

Be careful when buying install CDs! Some of the install CDs were
restricted to certain machines.

With 8.1 CDs restricted to certain machines (e.g. only install on
iMac) it's easy to get around any such restrictions by running the OS
8 installer from within its folder and running the OS 8.1 update
separately. Running the OS 8.1 installer directly stopped the install
process dead in its tracks.

I also suspect that running the OS 8 installer followed by the OS 8.1
updater avoids and licencing restrictions (e.g. to "iMac-only" or to
"the-machine-it-came-with-only") imposed by the combined OS 8.1
installer.

PS It seems to me that Apple provided an emergency boot floppy disk
image for download for OS 8 (for those machines that could run OS 8
but lacked a CD-ROM). I would expect that floppy disk was provided as
a free download. That floppy would possibly be enough to get BootX
working!

Eric.

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 10:47:29 -0700 (PDT)
> Thanks Clint, it's a G3/266 rev. 1 I've got an 8.0/8.1 disc, and a G3
> Mac OS install disc.  Since I come from a Windows world I'm more
> familiar with the draconian EULA's that accompany PC's.
> 
> --- yellowdog-newbie at lists.terrasoftsolutions.com wrote:
> > Norberto:
> >
> > However, since each machine shipped with some version of the Mac
> > OS, you
> > would not be violating any license agreement by loading some
> > version of
> > Mac OS 8.x on each machine. Go with a "x.1" release like 8.1,
> > 8.6.1, or
> > even 9.1, and you will not have problems.