Boycott Apple

Some time before 1989, Apple Computer, Inc. started a

lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, claiming

they had breeched Apple's copyright on the look and feel

of the Macintosh user interface. In December 1989, Xerox

failed to sue Apple Computer, claiming that the software for

Apple's Lisa computer and Macintosh Finder, both

copyrighted in 1987, were derived from two Xerox programs:

Smalltalk, developed in the mid-1970s and Star,

copyrighted in 1981.

Apple wanted to stop people from writing any program that

worked even vaguely like a Macintosh. If such look andfeel lawsuits succeed they could put an end to freesoftware that could substitute for commercial software.

In the weeks after the suit was filed, Usenet reverberated

with condemnation for Apple. GNU supporters RichardStallman, John Gilmore, and Paul Rubin decided to take action

against Apple. Apple's reputation as a force for progress

came from having made better computers; but The League forProgramming Freedom believed that Apple wanted to make all

non-Apple computers worse. They therefore campaigned to

discourage people from using Apple products or working for

Apple or any other company threatening similar obstructionist

tactics (e.g. Lotus and Xerox).

Because of this boycott the Free Software Foundation for a

long time didn't support Macintosh Unix in their software.

In 1995, the LPF and the FSF decided to end the boycott.

[Dates? Other events? Why did Xerox's case against Apple

fail?]

(1995-04-18)