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CherryOS Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

CherryBS writes "The CherryOS emulator, claiming that it could seamlessly run Mac OS X at 80% the speed of the host computer on standard x86 hardware (covered here previously), has created some controversy about stolen code. It turns out that CherryOS's emulation engine is nothing more than that of PearPC, an open source GPL project to create a PowerPC motheboard emulator." Read on for more details.

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..."

10 of 581 comments (clear)

  1. The best programmer of all time??? by FyRE666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  2. Re:"Stolen" code? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Downloaders don't pass the music/movies off as their own work. There is a difference although God knows what the legal difference would be.

  3. Re:What a surprise by UrgleHoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
  4. Re:I will never understand this. by Anita+Coney · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  5. Re:What a surprise by Dr.+Dew · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Stupidity by stevey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Explain the situation to the FSF and somebody would probably approach them.

    If the code is similar chances are symbol table information / exports in DLLs etc would allow binary comparisons to be used to establish a connection.

    That way source wouldn't need to be visible and you'd be clean.

    Failing that tip off the author - if you don't work there anymore and you feel bad why keep quiet, and then tell the world anonymously?

  7. Re:I [heart] /. by HughsOnFirst · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only on /. would a post about a post about nether-monkey-flight be modded to +5, Insightful.
    That, my friends, is the beauty of free speech.

  8. Re:I [heart] /. by Thing+1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only on /. would a post about a post about a post about nether-monkey-flight be modded to +5, Insightful.
    That, my friends, is the beauty of recursion.

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  9. Re:I [heart] /. by balster+neb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only on /. would a post about a post about a post about a post about nether-monkey-flight and the beauty of recursion be modded to +5, Insightful.
    That, my friends, is the beauty of Slashdot.

    Now mod this insightful, please.

  10. In civilised countries... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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".