[pavlov]

But can you run any x86 code in any x86 environment, even when not licensed for it?

Taken literally, your stance would mean that software licenses have no legal standing and binaries can be copied to anyone to be run anywhere -- it's just "running standard x86 code in a standard x86 environment" after all.

[userbinator]

EULA is a different thing from copyright.

[pavlov]

Indeed. Software licenses exist because copyright on its own is insufficient to define the relationship between vendors and customers.

I'm not saying that EULAs are good. But they're not obviously invalid just because common sense suggests you should be able to run some software on some hardware.

If Apple's EULA is unenforceable, how about Oracle's licensing agreements? Or the GPL? These are complicated questions.

[belorn]

Before those question exist, you got to answer even more complicated questions like if a license is a contract, if there is meeting of the minds, and what impact consumer protection laws has.

When it comes to an EULA, is that a contract or an license? Is there a meeting of the minds when one party has not read it or can't possible understand it even if they tried? If we then agree its a contract which both party must follow, how was the details of that contract communicated during the sale of the product? Are there parts which conflicts with contract/consumer protection laws, and what impact does that have to the contract as a whole?

A license agreement however is a bit easier if we agree that it is not a contract. If a person want to distribute a copyrighted work, then the law require them to seek permission from the copyright author. That permission is then granted through a license on specific conditions, conditions which the distributor has to prove in court if the permission is ever disputed. If the license would somehow be found to be invalid, then the distributor would be found distributing without a valid proof of permission.

Many people are of the second interpretation that licenses are not contract, which mean GPL and EULA's are under completely different legal theory and law. A contract can be unenforceable, and it doesn't impact the theory of software licenses.

[stephenr]

copyright is different from software licensing.