Slashdot Mirror
CherryOS Not All It's Cracked Up To Be
CherryBS continues "PearPC developers who have seen CherryOS have confirmed it is a fraud, while others remaining anonymous have posted the 'strings' output that CherryOS and PearPC share, showing many function names, warning/informational message strings that exist verbatim in PearPC. Additionally, now-pulled screenshots of CherryOS, mirrored in the long thread at pearpc.net, show CherryOS's boot process revealing variable names and missing or incorrectly emulated hardware in such a way as to be specific to PearPC. Arben Kryeziu, the developer of CherryOS, claims that no code has been taken from PearPC whatsoever, and that he will release a trial version this week. However, with the amount of deception on the part of the company, and considering this wouldn't be the first time he's violated the GPL, it's hard to believe they're telling the truth. Additionally, Kryeziu now claims the "trial" may "disable modules like sound or drag and drop"...likely because PearPC itself does not support such features. To further add to the tale, someone who was likely Arben was specifically asking for video server load testing for their vx30.com video codec/server product, even specifically mentioning slashdot as a great candidate, and in the days following the CherryOS story unfolding, went back and deleted the posts. The first day, all that was left online were two videos, one of which was subsequently removed because of PearPC-specific strings in the boot process shown in the video..."
Did anyone think it would be anything differnt? This reminds me of whenever some new console comes out, there is always some miricle emulator coming out soon that will play every game for it perfectly.
Let's check the facts here - this guy claims to have written a mac emulator that runs at 80% native speed, all by himself... in 4 months?!! He's either a frickin' genius, or he's "embraced" some code from somewhere - and I think we all know where...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
The first day, all that was left online were two videos, one of which was subsequently removed because of PearPC-specific strings in the boot process shown in the video..."
Heh. If they can't even cover their tracks THIS BAD, no wonder they got catched (which is a good thing).
Now I wonder... are all GPL violators this clumsy? Probably not... you know the saying, for every thief you catch, hundreds still run free.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
It's not theft, it's copyright infringement! At least, that's what we say about music and movies ... why should the party line be any different for GPLed code?
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Well, if the response to the initial accusations had been "Yup, you're right, it's based off of PearPC and we're going to release our code right away", no one would care (for example, see the TransGaming work with WINE... a slightly different, though similar situation (different because the TransGaming code base is from the MIT-licensed version of WINE)). However, they've repeatedly denied that their code is based off of PearPC, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, making it pretty obvious that they don't plan to comply with the GPL (assuming they release anything in the first place).
Too bad the mass media did not think of that when given the press release. No, instead, they just blindly passed it on to news consumers. This is a real problem with our media sources. Journalists do not do their jobs. Do you think any of them will learn from this? Nah, me neither.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
It's a VERY common scam. People do this to get other rich people interested in investing. The point is not to take those investments and actually create a viable product. The point is to spend the investments and leave town when they dry up.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Now this is what I call one sophisticated phishing scheme. They managed to get otherwise smart people knowledgeable about technology to hand over their personal info in the hopes of getting something most of them would admit sounds too good to be true. I wonder how many of the same people responded to the "email veerification request" messages claiming to be credit card companies. In my mind any company that has not proven anything in the real world is sure as sh*t not getting anything from me. I'd be curious how many people actually signed up on their website for the pre-release of the software.
- Find successful, interesting, or promising open-source/free-software product.
- Steal that product's code.
- Get your "new" commercial/pseudo-commercial/"subscription coerced" project covered on Slashdot
- Profit!!!!
And the sick fact is, this moneymaking scheme works. How much money do you think "CherryOS" has made sinceWant to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Who said they are supposed to do a source code diff? Did I imply that, Ummmm...no.
But to maintain credibility it is the media's job to do a reality check before posting stories, including press releases.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
The Yahoo printing of the press release is not a bad thing. It's clearly marked as a press release. If you want to pay your $600 to BusinessWire, you too can post a press release announcing that "monkeys will shoot out of my nether eye in my office at midnight tonight." Yahoo will pick it up and run it in its financial news section, because that's what it does with press releases as they come along the wire.
This is a good thing - pre-Web, getting your hands on a company's press releases was more time consuming and sometimes expensive. I prefer being able to research what a company says about itself. Of course, believing what a company says about itself is another matter, but why would a person read something marked "press release" without a skeptical eye?
Did you know, for example, that the people quoted in press releases generally don't say what they're quoted as saying? No indeed, even if multiple companies are involved, a marcom person wrote the thing, ran it by someone else's marcom person, got approval, and put it out on the wire. In some cases, the quoted person doesn't even know they've been quoted. "I'm very excited about the prospect of monkeys flying out of UrgleHoth's nether eye," said Dr. Dew. "I'm just glad they're not going to fly out of mine."
And I'm puzzled what your problem is with the Wired piece. The writer clearly states the claims as "claims" - so carefully, in fact, that I was more skeptical after reading it than I was before.
That said, I wouldn't complain if news sources did a better job aggregating related stories so that it's as easy to find out that someone's a pathological liar as it is to find out whatever they said before it was verified as a lie.
> What, you expect journalists to check the code of every new program against the code
Nah, just be journalists. Given a press release, "Product A rules!", a journalist asks "tell us why", while the current crop of media darlings simply says "tell us more!"
A.
When did we start modding "I told you so" posts insightful again? Maybe if there was some content, or even a link to an "I told you so" post, but this? BTW, I remember thinking to myself "Wow, the Ge6600 is going to be a great budget graphics card" when I first heard about it.
Glad to see my expectations were maintained. Mod me up, please.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
There once was a time when journalists asked questions instead of quoting press releases..
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Yep, I lost that illusion years ago!
Press releases make up a large chunk of the tech 'news' being 'reported'. I know this since I've seen it happen with the press releases a company I used to work for sent out. (Guestimate: small blurbs nearly 100% company content, medium ones over 50%, large articles much less. Typically, the larger the subject, the less corporate content.)
In the case of CherryOS, I'd guess most everything posted was corporate content. Now that there is a scandal, you'll see some 'scoop' articles here and there...with lost of corporate content.
Press releases are very effective for both reporters and companies; the reporter can meet deadlines with something to show while the company benifits from a '3rd party' saying what they wrote. My experience is that a typical 'report' that at worst the press release is printed verbatim with some paragraphs chopped for space, though many more are only 20% non-company provided content.
Why bother reading tech rags when most is not original or is overly sensationalized? (Ex: Ziff pubs.)
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
"I'm very excited about the prospect of monkeys flying out of UrgleHoth's nether eye," said Dr. Dew. "I'm just glad they're not going to fly out of mine."
Only on
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
this all brings to question: how many closed source companies live only from ripping off open source? hiding the traces, adding some stuff, releasing wondrously written self-serving press releases, where they denigrate open source and claim their own 'ingenuity and briliiance'?
who's really checking on them?
----------------
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
This issue has been thrown around countless times on /.
It seems that the consensus is that Apple actually loses a lot in the porting of their operating system to x86. For one, hardware support. The reason why MacOS X is as stable and runs as well as it does is because it is run on hardware specifically designed to use the software, and vice versa. If OS X were to move to x86, Apple would have to take into consideration the prospect of having it be run on literally millions of different combinations of hardware.
You may argue that Microsoft did a good job of this with Windows. However this is more of an accomplishment for the hardware vendors rather than Microsoft, as they are the ones that wrote the drivers. If Apple were to ship OS X for x86, then the hardware vendors, if they wanted to support the consumers using the system, would need to write new drivers. If you were to ask me, I would guess that the majority of the hardware vendors wouldn't even bother.
There may be a lot of interest from your standpoint in seeing Mac OS X being ported to the PC, however the general consensus is that Apple would be losing too much for them to see it as being worth it.
It's funny that point number two is just as true as point number one, but everyone on Slashdot seems to forget that when someone "steals" open source code. Well, I say if the music companies get no sympathy for people "stealing" their music, then open source coders deserve no sympathy for people "stealing" their code. "Get a better business model", right?
And yet, this attitude magically disappears in an MP3 or movie piracy article? Suddenly, THAT kind of piracy isn't "theft?" Honestly, what's the difference?
Easy. Piracy is different when you start selling pirated works online. I have no idea about the legal differences, but the moral implications are pretty clear to me.
The most obvious difference is that this is not just unauthorized copy (i.e. "piracy"), but actually plagiarism. I don't think any open source or free software advocate would defend plagiarism.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Piracy is different when you start selling pirated works online.
In civilised countries, piracy *begins* when you start selling the works. That's what piracy *is*.
Copyright infringement without monetary gain is just called "copyright infringement".