[messe]

> I have such a hard time imagining what sick twisting legal crap allows Apple to dictate terms like this. Another example is Nvidia explicitly dis-allowing their consumer GPUs to be used in data-centers. It's wild to me that company's can just make up whatever terms of use they feel like & we have to accept that.

As far as I understand it, those EULA agreements aren't enforceable in the EU.

That being said, NVIDIA don't have any obligation to sell to you in bulk if they find out you're installing consumer GPUs in a datacenter, so there's obviously an incentive to follow them.

[R0b0t1]

I don't think they're enforceable in the US either. Once you have it you have it. This is what a sale legally is, it terminates the rights of the former owner. They can refuse to sell to you if they think you'll do something with it, but if you get it from them by lying or from a second hand sale they can't do anything.

For software you can also have person A buy something, then give it to person B who didn't click a license agreement. But this isn't really necessary -- the case where Microsoft got slapped for motherboard locking Windows XP and had to undo it shows that if software is integral to the operation of a device rights to its use are transferred along with the sale of the item, much to the chagrin of CNC companies everywhere who have yet to be challenged on this.

It's relatively common for companies to use shell companies or employees to buy hardware off the record for investigative purposes. Place I used to work at would investigate buyers for this reason (difference being we really did give our customers free reign with the equipment, we just had to try to stop fraud and other things).

[Spivak]

You run around this by designing your hardware to only work with your provided software and require the user accept the T&C. If they find out your violating it they can terminate your license and, effectively, make your chips bricks.

You are legally allowed to reverse engineer them and provide your own software but Nvidia pretty much buys whole departments at universities to have the bleeding edge of hardware obfuscation. The stuff they do to make the chips inscrutable is absolutely bonkers.

[R0b0t1]

This is what the MS case was about with mobo locking. Refuse to run if they think you violated license. No, they can not do that. It just needs to be enforced.

[wmil]

Also they can easily claim that consumer cards aren't specced for 24/7 loads, thus installing in servers voids the warranty.