The cloners are still negotiating with Apple on the Mac OS 8 license according to Techwire's article. I can understand w

The cloners are still negotiating with Apple on the Mac OS 8 license according to Techwire's article. I can understand why this is a slow negotiation. First, the cloners originally got a real sweetheart deal from Apple, one that is hard to give up. Apple probably had to give them that deal in order to get any licensing deal because of all of the unknowns. The cloners (or at least some of them) made a heap of money, mostly at Apple's expense. Second, if Apple is going to survive in the hardware world and in the software world, the cloners are going to have to take market share away from Wintels in market areas where Apple is not strong and not from Apple. Apple needs to negotiate a deal with economic incentives for doing so and/or share in the cloners successes at Apple's expense. This is delicate because the cloners machines designed to work on already-licensed Mac OS 7.6 will run Mac OS 8 just fine. As I understand it, the only thing lost by not having a Mac OS 8 license is having to ask the computer purchaser to bear the cost of a Mac OS 7.6 to 8 upgrade, some $69. Not a lot of room for big money.