Legality of modifying OS x Installer File

[Indebi]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

For a program I'm working on, I realized it may be illegal, and the program is editing a file in the Mac OS x Installer (The disk to install Mac OS x on your Mac) that defines what Applications are listed in the Installer, would it be legal to edit this? It's specifically one file called Distribution, it doesn't have any copyright notices inside the file and it's a simple XML file but is it copyrighted? and would it be legal to edit it?

Thanks

 

[divgradcurl]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

For a program I'm working on, I realized it may be illegal, and the program is editing a file in the Mac OS x Installer (The disk to install Mac OS x on your Mac) that defines what Applications are listed in the Installer, would it be legal to edit this? It's specifically one file called Distribution, it doesn't have any copyright notices inside the file and it's a simple XML file but is it copyrighted? and would it be legal to edit it?

Thanks

Are you editing it for your own personal use, or do you plan on distributing it?

 

[Indebi]

I plan on distributing this program as an open source project under a GPL license (v3 possibly v2)

 

[divgradcurl]

I plan on distributing this program as an open source project under a GPL license (v3 possibly v2)

Most likely the answer to your question lies in the OSX license agreement.

Let me reask the question -- are you distributing a new installer file, or a program that can modify a given user's own installer file? If the former, you will need permission from Apple, almost certainly. If it's the (more likely) latter, then you will want to look to the OSX license agreement to see if there is anything in their about modifying the operating system by programs. Do you need to crack encryption or anything to make the modifications, or is it a simple change to a text file?

 

[Indebi]

It's the latter, it takes what's currently in the OS X Install Image you specify and allows you to change it to your liking easily, the image is in plain text format, I believe Unicode but it may be ANSI

In the beginning of the MAC OS X Eula it does state:
"This software may be used to reproduce, publish, and distribute materials." Which may or may not be relevent but I believe it is. The only other item I could find in it regarding editing files is regarding decompilation or finding ways to get the source code which was obviously stated to be illegal