[HN Gopher] When we were first adding Mac OS X guest support at ...
___________________________________________________________________
When we were first adding Mac OS X guest support at VMware (2022)
Author : luu
Score : 68 points
Date : 2023-05-29 20:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (numi.st)
(TXT) w3m dump (numi.st)
| antonvs wrote:
| They wouldn't have to be horrified if their employer was more
| open about its software. Is there even a legal way to run a Mac
| VM on non-Apple hardware?
| m463 wrote:
| But you can run vmware on apple hardware.
| lloeki wrote:
| most notably you can run ESXi (or is it vSphere or something
| currently?) bare metal and virtualize macOS
| giobox wrote:
| How does licensing work, or am I hopelessly out of date? My
| understanding is historically the EULA-type thing on the OS
| only allowed you to virtualize on another Mac running
| macOS, or something along these lines, similar to other
| comment above. This always caused all sorts of fun for
| automated testing scenarios for me in years past...
|
| The technical barriers weren't the biggest headache around
| this in a commercial setting previously.
| lloeki wrote:
| > allowed you to virtualize on another Mac running macOS
|
| ^W^W and you'd be right. The only runtime requirement is
| Apple hardware.
|
| The initial wording was something along the lines as "on
| Apple-branded hardware", creating (if you were a bit
| zany) the loophole of stamping an Apple sticker on any
| hardware and declare it Apple-branded. That was the joke
| in some Hackintosh circles circa Snow Leopard.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| EULAs are far from completely legally binding in all
| jurisdictions. In fact, they seem to be a smorgasbord of
| legalese.
| giobox wrote:
| I'm absolutely aware of this. It doesn't change the fact
| most professional medium to large enterprises will want
| to follow along, so whether it's truly legally binding or
| not is a moot point in reality a lot of the time.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yes, which is why I'm always surprised when companies are
| willing to offer products tending to these edgy markets.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Right, so you can run macOS inside ESXI on an Intel Mac
| and be fully EULA-compliant. This is a thing people do.
| lloeki wrote:
| Or on Linux in Virtualbox, which combined with GitLab
| runner's virtualbox executor leveraging snapshotting
| provides you with instant-on, clean state macOS for each
| job run.
| toyg wrote:
| You mean a virtualized Linux on Mac, that in turn runs
| VirtualBox?
|
| Because afaik, as soon as MacOS is not on Apple hardware
| at some level, it's not license-compliant.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Legal: probably. I don't expect consumers installing their
| legally bought software on a machine the manufacturer didn't
| approve to hold up in court.
|
| Without breaking the EULA: no. For the same reason you're not
| allowed to install Windows on an ARM Chromebook.
|
| Legally and without breaking the EULA: only the Darwin kernel
| and the various open source tools that can run on top of it.
|
| If you've bought an OS install disk, I'm not sure how
| enforceable "you may only use this disk on hardware we sell" is
| in countries with consumer protection laws (i.e. large parts of
| Europe). In some jurisdictions, you would even be allowed to
| reverse engineer and patch any code that breaks compatibility.
|
| If you're using a license tied to your MacBook on another
| machine, or pirate a copy, that's probably illegal in every way
| possible.
|
| In theory you can install Lion, software you can physically buy
| and the last way to get a separate OSX license, install it,
| probably legally, and then upgrade the OS through official
| installers. That becomes a complex legal matter very quickly
| (as you often need to fake hardware IDs of real Apple devices
| to get through the process) as every upgrade comes with its own
| EULA, but it's a way forward.
|
| However, blocking these installs is pointless anyway. We're at
| the point where docker run -it [...] sickcodes/docker-
| osx:ventura spawns a VM for you.
|
| Lastly, as long as the software was developed on a Mac and
| tested with the open source kernel on other platforms, there's
| no legal reason why they couldn't have created an emulator.
| Darwin is a free kernel in almost every sense of the word and
| while their customers may be breaking the TOS between
| themselves and Apple, there's no restriction on selling
| software that may break the TOS if run on the wrong machine.
| With Macs being Intel PCs capable of running Linux and Windows,
| often lacking special drivers from Apple, targeting generic x64
| seems like a perfectly fine solution.
| saagarjha wrote:
| They absolutely would have.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > Is there even a legal way to run a Mac VM on non-Apple
| hardware?
|
| I don't think so. No technical reasons, though, qemu runs it
| just fine.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I ponder how many engineers remain at VMware that still play
| tricks like that. These days Workstation seems like a carcass of
| its older self.
| numist wrote:
| Not many! They fired the entire hosted-ui team in 2016 (ref:
| https://blog.chipx86.com/2016/01/26/a-tribute-to-vmware-work...
| )
| wnscooke wrote:
| What's with the weird looking 'vm' on vmware?
| ale42 wrote:
| some fancy Unicode (small-caps letters... see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps#Unicode). Not sure why
| the author used them, though.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Not sure why the author used them, though.
|
| I'm pretty sure the author is trying to mimic the VMWare
| logo: https://cf-
| assets.www.cloudflare.com/slt3lc6tev37/6lqgerXP23...
|
| Reading through their blog, the author appears to enjoy being
| clever with unicode.
| numist wrote:
| Pretty much. When I was at VMware (2007-2011) the canonical
| logo used small caps for the capital letters. I thought it
| looked nice.
| gbraad wrote:
| unnecessary stylizing. seems to have been changed as it
| seriously messes up searching.
| commandersaki wrote:
| Maybe not being indexed under vmware in plaintext is the
| goal?
| gh123man wrote:
| Maybe a slightly off topic question, but with the recent-ish news
| of Corellium winning against Apple in court to sell an iOS
| virtualization service. How is it that virtualizing macOS (on
| non-apple hardware) is still NOT ok (illegal?)?
|
| Cloud providers are forced to host mac instances on real mac
| hardware for example (with a lot of strange restrictions).
| 4ad wrote:
| Virtualizing macOS on non-Apple hardware is against Apple's
| TOS. It is not illegal. Big difference.
| solarkraft wrote:
| What exactly are the repercussions for breaking them? Sure,
| Apple wouldn't sell me anything officially anymore, but how
| could they actually stop me? They evidently can't stop
| Corellium.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| They could sue you in court, and the court could find for
| them and enjoin you from doing a particular thing (an
| "injunction"), and then if you did that thing any more
| you'd be in contempt of court, which can result in fines
| and jail time.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-30 23:02 UTC)