Comment by willtemperley 3 days ago
> It’s reductio ad absurdum
It's not, it's just factually wrong.
If Apple can legally claim 30% of your salary then a doctor using an iPad to demonstrate results of a scan to a patient has to pay Apple 30% of their consultation fee.
That's reductio ad absurdum.
Lol.
If that were legally enforcable, which is almost certainly not the case, Microsoft and Google could do the same, making your argument moot in this context.
Every software company can do this. Oracle Java is free for personal use but if you use it in prod you have to pay a licence based on the number of employees in your company. Epic games takes 5% of your revenue above a million if you use unreal for a game. Docker desktop requires a paid license if you have over 250 employees or $10 million in revenue.
Let's continue with the reductio ad absurdum - a taxi driver uses their iPhone to navigate. Can Apple take 30% of their revenue?
Absolutely, if the taxi driver signs a contract / agrees to terms of service. What law prohibits them from charging that? This is why open source is so important.
> If Apple can legally claim 30% of your salary then a doctor using an iPad to demonstrate results of a scan to a patient has to pay Apple 30% of their consultation fee.
Apple could absolutely do this. They could say that professional medical use of macOS requires a commercial license, and the price of that commercial licence could be linked to revenue.
Doctors - or rather their hospital IT/procurement departments - would be held to the terms of service they agree to. Far more rigorously than ordinary consumers.