Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

Ok to Charge Cash to Install Rockbox on other People's iPods?

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Xomphos:
Hi,
A friend and I recently had a great idea. Create a small buisness thing where in our local area, we install Rockbox and/or iPodLinux on people's iPods for cash. There is a large market for it and it would be a great way to make money. However, we were wondering if this is legal or not. Would it be legal if we provided a link and stated that we do not own/create the software used? Technically, we are just providing the services and labor to install it and get them started with Rockbox and/or iPodLinux. So, ya, I just wanted to know if it would be legal or not if we provied certain information like credit to the projects (iPodLinux and Rockbox) about the projects.
Thanks! :D

Yotto:
I'm saying no.  I don't believe it's illegal, so long as you provide them with the source code (Maybe only if they ask for it, so just be prepared) and they know that they're not buying Rockbox, buy your time to install it.

I say no because if you are not technically savvy enough to install rockbox, you're really not technicall savvy enough to use it.  Especially on an iPod where it will occationally lock up, fail to tagc er... Database up iTunes'd music, or require a reset.  Not to mention upgrades.

Are you going to be responsible (ie, accept their calls) if they, for example, can't find a song they transferred over from iTunes? Or one they copied from the command line?  Or if they set their foreground and background colors the same?  Or booted up withe the hold switch on and "now it looks ugly"?

Think about that.  Because they WILL call.  You put this on their iPod, for cash, and you better be damn willing to support it or they'll tell everybody you broke their mp3 players.

And no, just telling them some stuff ahead of time isn't enough.  Printing the manual for them isn't enough.  They WILL have problems and they will call you.  And if you protect yourself by getting them to agree to not call you, then they'll tell everybody that Rockbox is garbage and it broke their iPod.  And (I assume) you don't want that.

*edit*
As an example, http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=7586.0 (Nothing against the poster, this is just to prove my point.  It's 4:00am, your phone rings.  The man at the other end says this)

mikeage:
100% OK.

In fact, that's the ideal business model according to the GPL.

You do, of course, have to explain that rockbox is not your software, and that they can install it themselves using the source code available at rockbox.org (you may have to actually host a mirror yourself or provide a CD).

I do agree with Yotto that installing on an iPod may not be the best idea at this time, however.

michael.conner:
IANAL, but as long as you're not putting it up on ebay and calling it PimpMyiPod, I can't imagine there being really any legal problems at all. Best Buy and other retailers make a killing installing Windows or virus scan programs or whatever on peoples' computers, because people are willing to pay the money to not have to do it themselves.  Are these people being cheated? Not in the legal or lay person's definition of fraud.  Are they paying too much for something that they really could do themselves if they weren't technophobic / lazy / unable to be bothered with it?  Maybe.

Yotto brings up the usability point -- people love the iPod because it "just works."  I agree.  (And frankly, I can't see there being a market for iPodLinux among those people, either.)

Llorean:
Don't forget to provide a hardcopy of the manual, and insist that they read it *before* they tromp over here and start asking for help on the same six questions we always get. :-P

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