From one Mac mini to another, is it possible?

I've got a registered 1.42 Mac Mini, but after playing eBay chicken, I've now got a 1.5 with 64meg of Graphics Ram, the fan's a bit noisier, but I can tell the difference in the graphics memory, so can I transfer the Registration file, or do I need to buy another? Both are working fine, and I don't want to accidentally on purpose drop the 1.42 down the stairs, or something.

[ Edited by stephen_robinson on 2009/11/12 20:54 ]

I don't think that you can transfer the license from one machine to another.
At least, that's what I understand by reading the registration rules.

Maybe if you offered to donate the machine to the MorphOS team they would give you a key for your new mini?
They might turn you down on the grounds that they might get a glut of people offering them Efikas as donations.

Another option rather than throwing it down the stairs is that I would buy it off you. I've already got two 1.5ghz machines but I could always use it at work instead of my efika.

Unfortunately, there is no way you can prove to the MorphOS team that you have not kept a copy of the MorphOS license keyfile, so that you, or someone else could use it after they agree to give you a replacement license keyfile for another MacMini computer.

Giving the MorphOS team your MacMini might work, but I doubt it. Better that you sell your 1.42GHz MacMini to someone else with the license keyfile and then take the money you get to buy yourself another license keyfile for your 1.5GHz MacMini.

Hopefully you will find a former, or current Amiga user that does not already have a MorphOS computer, so they can find out for themselves the advantages of MorphOS and the speed of it running on the MacMini. Remember, if we do not promote MorphOS to other potential users, no one else will.

Cost of a Mac Mini 1.5 ?155+15 P&P, cost of MorphOS licence, about ?150.. Hmm..

That's not a bad price for a 1.5ghz mini. Seen them go for much more.
Anyway if you want to flog your 1.42 with license send me a PM. However I haven't got large amounts of cash at the moment as I've just bought two for the "morphed mac shop" but I have got enough to cover the license plus a bit.

Positivsm ahead! See it that way: You saved o lot on the purchase of the Mini, so you still have the funds for the key.

But I know the situation is sometimes a bit unfortunate. If I would be tight on money, I'd sell off the 1.42 GHz maschine, otherwise I'd keep the other as spare maschine.

[ Edited by Zylesea on 2009/11/12 22:09 ]

i find it amusing that people in this forums think that a single person/user with multiple computers should spend thousands on the os for them...

maybe some type of network checking of mac address and ip address ranges could be used to ensure that a single household could use a single household group of cheaper keys...

Quote:

I find it amusing that people keep complaining about the way MorphOS team has decided to implement their protection of their intellectual property. How would you like it if a bunch of people who have not created their own work kept complaining about how you chose to manage your own work, or kept complaining on what it should be worth? If you have the money to buy so many computers, then it should not be no problem to purchase the licenses for the OSes for them, or if you don't like the cost of the OS, then stick with Linux and suffer the consequences.

@stephen_robinson,

What does the cost of the hardware have to do with the worth of the OS? By your logic, when/if MorphOS is released for the eMac, which I can probably get one for free or for less than $40 (US Dollars), then that version of MorphOS should be what? ........ $10, or free?

The cost of the USED hardware has nothing to do with the value of the OS that you can now run on it. In fact you should be happy and willing to pay the MorphOS Team a bonus amount on top of and above the 150 euro license fee, just for releasing their OS on a hardware choice that you can get so cheaply, that also runs their OS faster than any other hardware that it has ever been released on before. They did all of us a huge favor by completing this release for the MacMini, or would you rather they go back to concentrating their efforts on proprietary hardware that is even more out of date, is buggy in the beginning, is limited to a production run of hundreds, instead of hundreds of thousands, and only 20% of the community interested in it can afford such hardware? (sounds like the SAM situation to me)

I would like to see a reduction in the license fee too, but I am sick of seeing the complaints about it.

@amigadave
The non-transferable license is my number one reason for not buying MorphOS at all. I really dont see the point in registering MorphOS for my Peg1 when I cannot transfer it, I will most likely get a minimac in not too distant future, but then again I might just as well wait for "the next new supported hardware", and hence end up not buying a license at all.

Am I willing to pay 150 euros for a system I'll just play around with every now and then? If it was transferable, yes, but since it isnt, no.

[ Edited by kolla on 2009/11/15 7:20 ]

@Kolla

I can see your point. If MorphOS is just something you're going to play around with then 150euros is steep but personally I use MorphOS as my main OS so I'm quite happy to pay. Some kind of multi-license discount would be good but I can se that would be difficult to implement.

Well, AmigaDave will be happy to know, I gave up and just bought another keyfile, #687 if anyones keeping count.

Which now means, I've bought MorphOS for Peg2, at the cheap rate, Efika, which in retrospect, er... Hmm.. and now 2 MacMinis.

I feel the MorphOS team now owe me. So if my next bright idea dosn't get fixed in 2.5 I'll be upset.

Quote:

No, that's not what i meant.
Paying 150 euros once is fine, but having to do it multiple times doesnt make sense for me. I prefer to decide myself on what hardware I want to run software I buy, that includes OSes.

@Kolla

Ok, I see what you mean now
However I don't see how else the MorphOS guys could avoid the piracy of their work other than to go down the Hyperion route - expensive hardware where you must buy the OS at the same time (I know the PegII/A1 version of OS4.1 is an exception to this).
Lets face it most of the people interested in MorphOS come from an Amiga background. And people with an Amiga background have a reputation to sail under the Jolly Roger.

[ Edited by Ruud on 2010/1/8 21:32 ]

@kolla,

I don't disagree that there is a problem with the licensing of MorphOS, and I also do not agree with the pricing policy, though for different reasons than most complaints I have seen here. I am getting a bit sick of reading about the same complaints every day in different threads here at MorphZone though.

I suggest that more constructive methods be discussed and thought up to solve these issues. As I have said on many occasions in these forums, I still consider myself a newbie here and to MorphOS, so I do not know how much discussion on these topics has gone on before I arrived. I am guessing that since I arrived at close to the time MorphOS2.0 was released, and from what I have read, it was the first version that required a paid license fee, so perhaps I have not missed any of the discussions regarding the licensing and registration unrest here in the World of MorphOS users. Although, the practice of tying the registration to the hardware has been in effect long before version 2.0 was released, so maybe some discussions regarding that have gone on before my time here.

Being a pro-active type of person, I wonder if other methods of handling registrations and license fees have been discussed in a non-emotional and constructive way that the MorphOS Development Team might be willing to listen to? The size of the MorphOS group of users and developers works against us, as it is easier to ignore the pleas and wishes of a few hundred users than it would be if it were a few thousand, or tens of thousands. Also, when so many of their potential customers have participated in file sharing (and some outright piracy) in the past, it is easy to see why the MorphOS Development Team would want to implement a strong method of safeguarding their work.

Unfortunately, the very security practices the MorphOS Development Team has put into place to protect their OS from piracy, is also helping to limit it's success in sales to many of it's potential customers. It would help us all if we could have a civilized and constructive discussion on how the team might change the way MorphOS is registered to the hardware, so that perhaps transferring one license from a current computer to a future computer might be possible without the possibility of abusing the authors of the OS, but if the largest company in the Computing World cannot make their OS safe from pirates, how can we expect our small group of users and the even smaller group of MorphOS Development Team to come up with a way to prevent piracy of MorphOS?

Although it would increase the license cost of MorphOS in the future, I would not be opposed to a USB dongle key as an alternative to having the license tied to the computer MAC hardware address, or other hardware component of the computer which prevents the license from being transferable.

The issue of people that are not happy with the price of MorphOS is related, but separate to the issue of the license being tied to the hardware, so it should probably be discussed in another thread (again, in a constructive and non-emotional way, but I don't see the team changing their minds regarding the price, as it is not really out of line compared to the amount of work they have done and the return they are receiving for that work). As I have written before, the only reason I would like to see the price of MorphOS reduced, is to more rapidly increase the number of MorphOS users and developers, which in turn will also increase the amount of income from license fees, but that argument is hard to justify before hand, as no one has a crystal ball to predict the number of people that will purchase at 99 euros instead of 150 euros, so it is just a guess on my part that the team would benefit at the lower license fee amount. In other words, could the team sell more than 50% more licenses if they lowered the price to 99 euros? In my opinion, the answer is yes, they might sell twice as many licenses. I have paid for mine and I don't have any problem with them lowering the price now, without any consideration for those that have already paid for their license at the full price. Maybe they could temporarily lower the price for a few months as a Christmas sales promotion?

Lastly, may I suggest to everyone that the more we complain about the licensing and registration policies that have been put in place by the MorphOS Development Team, the more we hurt ourselves as well as that very team. So, please, as much as possible, keep your SUGGESTIONS worded in an as constructive as possible way, and if you feel that you must complain about these policies, then do it in a private email to the support email address to the Development Team, instead of on a public forum. But before you send them a complaint in an email, think to yourself if it is something that they don't already know form reading these forums, and if it contains any useful content for them to consider, or if it is just a waste of their time to read it.

@amigadave

I don't think of this as much of a problem. It's just a choice that was done, and it doesn't suit everyone, that's all. That I don't bother to get a license of MorphOS is hardly a problem for anyone, not even myself.

[ Edited by kolla on 2009/11/15 7:53 ]

> the practice of tying the registration to the hardware has been in effect long
> before version 2.0 was released

That's only true for the PowerUP version. The Pegasos version of MorphOS 1.x didn't need any registration.

@thread

What if I thrashed my hardware, e.g. if it was broken badly? May I then send it as a warranty of my claim that the previous key is void and get a substitute?

From the IT perspective, license transferring it is just a matter of implementing SIMPLISTIC keyfile deactivation in the registration program. The reason there's no such thing is I guess because they're either
(1) lazy (which is acceptable)
(2) or maybe it IS about the money mainly, then goes the fun...

Also you barely have any rights by buying the key file. As a counterexample, I had several pcs of software on my previous mobile. I got myself a new model this year. ALL licenses stated that they're hardware-specific. After that I emailed ALL the vendors asking for a discount should one exist. ALL of them gave me the new keys for FREE.

Anyway the person complaining here bought another license eventually. There you go - 100 licenses in a month. 50 could be forced by the MorphOS team by these rules, someone stated that already in the counter thread.

One more remark, If I was to be having dozens of MorphOS licenses of dozens of my hardware, I'd get OS4 eventually, just for curiosity. Should I have a hardware of course because Sam is still impossible.

So calling my statements a FUD is a FUD itself. One can not take away rights to write truth, there are legal regulations (see: freedom of speech etc.). FUD shmud, even if it violates some TOS agreement, it still makes one protected by the law.

One more constructive suggestion: MOSTeam might charge for license transfer. Say 50 Eur but now that's a generousity then, isn't it?

EDIT: rephrase insert (italics), typoz

[ Edited by DiskDoctor on 2009/11/15 18:31 ]

[ Edited by DiskDoctor on 2009/11/15 18:34 ]

Quote:

As has already been mentioned innumerable times before; yes. Alternatively any other means that can verify its demise will do.

Quote:

Put up or shut up. How is this "simplistic" deactivation supposed to work? IE, how do you propose one stops a person from just sticking with the version of MorphOS that works with this key? Or are you proposing that we run intrusive checks like M$ with their "Genuine (dis)Advantage"?

Quote:

Uhm, sure, why not?

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It's already free, how's that for generosity?


- CISC

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Seems like a nice solution to me... It could allow easy license transfers (ok, you shouldn't transfer your license every 2 minutes, but once every three months could be ok)...

Well I bought it, (Friday night) but I'm still waiting for the key file to arrive (Monday night), anyone else?

sent my payment yesterday, still waiting.