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..."
The other day, when I first saw mention of 'CherryOS', the first thing that came to mind was "I bet they're using PearPC code without attribution.". A full-featured PPC emulator (an incredibly difificult accomplishment) coming out so soon after another?
Glad to see that my fears were vindicated. DIE, HOARDER SCUM.
while IANAL, is this necessarily illegal?? if he makes the source code for pearpc downloadable/packaged with with cherry and acknowlodges somewhere in the eula that its pearpc rebranded than while he has morally been an asshole he hasnt violated the gpl, has he?
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
You know, it's one thing for a corporate guy to think that he can get away with this. It's quite another for an open source developer to pilfer and another open source developer's code, release his "modifications" online and claim it's his. The CherryOS guy(s) better watch out, they may find themselves next in line for a darwin award for being that stupid.
I mean seriously... this is about as bright as murdering your neighbor in your front lawn in the middle of the day and stretching their corpse out on a lawn chair in your yard while you cut the grass...
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Sebastian Ballas, PearPC's lead developer, said a screenshot of CherryOS shows a variable named "SPIRO MULTIMAX 3000," a nonsensical term Ballas claims to have invented for use in PearPC.
"It is absolutely unlikely that someone uses exactly this name for the same purpose," he said. "The way he (Kryeziu) is lying is making me angry."
When told that variables with the same names had been found in both CherryOS and PearPC, Kryeziu said programming logic often leads to variables and functions with similar, or identical, names.
"There are some functionalities that can only be done a certain way," he said. "Names are going to be similar or identical because there are only certain ways to do things."
BUAHAHHAHAAHHAHHAHA
Why would anyone annouce this without having the product? I'm not saying that they do or don't have a product, I'm just completely blown away when people announce products that don't exist and expect to somehow profit from them.
to the ripoff were so overwhelming, that its amazing they managed to scam so many news organizations. From almost identical function key hints in the title bar, to similar boot strings to the ridiculous idea of someone "getting tired of carrying two laptops" and writing CherryOS as a work-around, can anyone, really, truly be surprised?
I did an article on my jackwhispers website about this.
I was one of the first to point this out and MANY of the PearPC forums respondents replied to me in email and told me about all the links within this article. (One of them is quite startling - about Arben having downloaded PearPC)
There are a few other insights at the link above.
Sorry to whore my own site, but I almost think it should be linked here too because I added a little political UNcorrectness to the mix.
Why the Cherry or The Pear May Be Apple's Next Lemon
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
- Hubert
On another note, it appears he's trying for an SCO style attack, where he repeats things so many times that people start to think that it must be true... and he's probably counting on the PearPC folks not having enough money to fight him in court. That's if he's actually planning to release his modified copy, to anyone but the press, which is also in question.
knowing a bit about PPC/x86 code translation and cross-platform emulation, and also knowing others who are currently working on many emulation projects, I can safely say that 80% performance is pretty much impossible in what he is doing. First off, you have little-endian vs. big endian architectures to deal with; then you have to also factor in OS overhead, memory management translation, processor-unique opcodes that must have their logic translated to a different meme, incompatible register types, etc. The PearPC guys did an excellent job of overcoming all these hurdles, but as anyone who has used PearPC knows, routing around the obstacles comes with a massive performance hit. If he said that CherryOS took an 80% performance hit and that a technology beta was going to be released soon, he would at least be talking in the realms of remote possibility.
I hope he likes bartending, or that the poor fool whose name he's possibly been using finds out what he's been up to before it is too late.
Does anyone else some how find that his VX30 might be a rip off of the ogg theora java port. The fact that its listed on this site, right next to the java port of ogg theora is fishy..
And I'm not a die-hard "Everything must be by the book!" type-a guy, but what's to prevent some a-hole, which this Arben does appear to be shaping up as, from abusing the hell outta the GPL by copying, stealing, and selling the source of a GPL project as their own?
Yes, we do have the world-renowned "Slashdot Effect", which may cost him or her a little with their hosting company, but what other ramifications does the average GPLer hope for in cases such as this (profiting from GPL'd code without giving credit or $$ to the actual creators)?
I suppose that if the problem were big enough, one might hope for some support from the EFF, and perhaps there's some other well-intending lawyers for the bigger GPL cases, but I see little to actually deal with some of guys like this. If I call up his local police, they'll be laughing at me all the way to the donut shop, not running over to arrest him and charge him with violating the GPL.
And the worst part of this, in my view, is that the average consumer isn't a geek, and so losers like this can still make money off them since they aren't privy to this "elite geek knowledge", as we obviously are. You and me can laugh tomorrow about how CherryOS is appearing to be every bit the fake that we all thought it was last week when it hit the boards, but the average guy who just wants to run that cool OSX on his $300 PC isn't going to be privy to this kinda news. So ol' Arben's still likely to make a nice bit of money off these people before disapearing with some easy cash (potentially, of course - There's no smoking gun showing that CherryOS is a fake yet to my knowledge).
So other than losing a few potential sales to us geeks, and getting a bad rap in the nerd pools around the world, is that all this guy can expect? Certainly the average GPL code writer's not going to have the knowhow or money to go after an anonymous name who could be anywhere in the world.
Does this kinda thing happen a lot? I can see where someone could likely get away with this and make some nice cash if they were to avoid very visible, and geeky products such as this. I mean... If I'm writing closed-source IVR software in Russia, and I just repackage a bunch of open source code as my own, what's the odds that anyone would notice? Now... Stealing a product as new, and with as big of "WOW" factor as PearPC takes some big balls, or a lot of stupidity, but for a lot of smaller, or less public projects, it wouldn't surprise me to find this was happening more often than people want to know about.
And for that matter, what's to prevent all the entepreneurs(sp?) out there reading this story from doing this? I can see at least one Slashdot reader going "It's just the GPL, and it looks like it's easy money! I'll just register me a fake domain, erase some copyrights and come up with a logo, and voila! I'm ready to start selling me my new Internet browser "FireWolf" for a nice profit"?
Sorry if this is a well known thing... I tend to avoid philosophic discussions on the GPL as often it's a lot of flaming, and little real knowledge, but this is a question I've always wondered, yet have never seen definatively answered.
Black ops helicopters come at night and you and your family are shot. Or so I've heard. That might have been rumours, though.
Actually, nothing happens in the first place. If the original copyright holders know about it, they might initiate legal action. If you violate the GPL, you're typically redistributing without complying with the GPL. The GPL grants special rights to redistribute under certain conditions; without the GPL redistribution is copyright violation or something similar. That's the beauty of it - if you think the GPL is unfair and invalid for some reason, that's cool, you don't have to work with it, but the default rules without the GPL are a lot stricter.
Several companies (e.g. Belkin) have been coerced into releasing the source and complying with the GPL under threat of legal action, but as far as I know there has not yet been a legal challenged fought to the end. It very much is a matter of financial power, I guess, at least in the U.S. There are organisations and funds who can help the GPL developer in need, e.g. notably the FSF, which fights for the GPL of those projects whose copyrights were assigned to the FSF.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I used to work for a company that violated the license of an open source piece of software. They stole the code verbatim and I didn't realize this until I had left the company and was searching for an open source alternative to their software. I stumbled across the open source version and though "Hey, they use the same variable and function names as us...hey, they use the same headers...hey, they use the same conversion arrays...hey, we stole their product!"
Unfortunately, they are making millions of dollars off of this open source software and the original author isn't seeing a penny. I feel bad, but I am one of two people who actually saw the source code (the other being the owner of the company).
If I said anything the company would instantly know who snitched on them and I'm not going to deal with those repurcussions.
They kept good tabs on making sure no one else could figure out they stole open source code and they continue to make large amounts of money on it today. So yes, not everyone is as clumsy as this person is.
Didn't anyone read the original post? Didn't anyone notice? We were USED! He wanted to get slashdotted! He wanted our hits! We were a stress test!
/. crowd to hit his servers.
The "CherryOS" was just a blind to get the
We've been had.
That raises the question. Now what?
--LWM
My letter to the CherryOS people, dated 5 days ago:
----cut here------
I'm interested in Cherry OS but I need to know how well it stacks up against
PearPC (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.pearpc.net/).
Two questions in particular:
1) what are the advantages and disadvantages of Cherry OS vs. PearPC? At a
minimum, I'd expect ease of installation, ease of use, and customer service to
be higher in a commercial product.
2) does Cherry OS use any PearPC code?
The latter is particularly important, because
1) I need to know if security vulnerabilities are likely to be common to both
products or are likely to be different.
2) Using widely-used open-source software in a commercial product is a
competitive advantage for you, in that bugs are more likely to be found and
fixed quicker.
If your product is based on PearPC, please note that, as with Linux, if I find
I use an open-source program heavily and come to depend on up-to-date
maintenance, I'm willing to pay for it.
I do expect that if your product uses any open-source code, you are complying
with the licenses. In the case of PearPC, this is the GNU Public License, the
same lincense that made wildly-successful companies like RedHat and SuSE (now
part of Novell) to earn billions of dollars.
Oh, congradulations on being Slashdotted. Even though it was a minor
inconvenience for you, it is a badge of honor.
----cut here------
Well, looks like I gave them the benefit of the doubt and they betrayed me. Sigh.
Thankfully, it looks like I was wrong about the "minor" inconvenience. The light of day scares the roaches away.
If only they'd come out and said "PearPC free, technical support and priority bug fixes, $50" that might sell.
CherryOS is down at the moment, here's Google's Cache. Enjoy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This guys even built a 10 levels MLM scheme for that Gaim ripoff... I wonder if the ads would irritate me more or the people trying to convince me to join the MLM...
I kept quite and tell people anonymously because I feel bad, rather than not telling anyone at all. And if I did tell someone my previous company had no problems with sueing people for any reason. But I'll take your advice about the FSF and try to contact them about it.
.Net. I'm not sure how comparisons can be made across platforms like that since dll symbols well...didn't exist in the original application.
Problem is the original source was for unix x-windows and the company I worked for ported it to windows for ActiveX and
Specks
Batteries not included
Not everyone on slashdot is a pirate and only the most extreme hold the position you mentioned (the "music is just a stream of bits..." position).
I, for instance, am a free software developer and I hate it when people pirate music. Because it makes us all look bad and opens the door for overgeneralizing people, like yourself, who want to view the world in shades of black and white.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
So, we're all up in arms because some guy stole GPL code (note the use of the word "taken" and "stole" used throughout the article and discussion).
Probably because the person involved is a commercial pirate. In other words they are selling someone elses copyrighted work without permission.
And yet, this attitude magically disappears in an MP3 or movie piracy article? Suddenly, THAT kind of piracy isn't "theft?"
Typically these copies are not being sold.
Honestly, what's the difference? In both cases, someone else's copyrighted materials are taken and used for their own purposes.
the difference between pure copyright infringement and copyright infringement plus making money from the infringement.
Copyright infringement denies the creator's the ability to earn a living...
Copyright itself has done more to deny a creator the ability to earn a living. It has given publishers too much power over distribution. It is being used to criminalize the very tools creators need to distribute their works cheaply. It is being used to keep other tools out of reach by making them needlessly expensive. Copyright is not about creators. It's about publishers. Creators are being duped into taking up the fight for the publishers. One reason might be because they(creators) think that they can't make their living without the publishers(distributors). Creators should be more careful with the contracts they sign.
What?
Apparently, Arben Kryeziu is really no deveoper of any kind.
As people already suspected, he stole the PearPC code for CherryOS, he most likely stole Java code for his VX streamer (see posts above). And now I have reason to suspect that he also did not develop the bumpnetworks.com website.
He posted an outsourcing bid for one of his web site developments (bumpnetworks.com?). Search on that page for the string "Hello Arben Kryeziu" and "Hello Bumpnetworks" to confirm this. Now scroll to the winner's bid (will say "AWARDED" on the left). His location Donetsk, UA (Ukraine -> Russia). Now, go to bumpnetworks.com and follow the menu: "Company -> Partnerships." You will discover Site-Mechanics to be a partner. Go there and visit their clientele references. You will notice that most of the clients and work done was in Russia(n). Could it be that that guy developed bumpnetworks.com (and many other)?
That leaves us with the original question: what did he really develop or did he "outsource and share code" (LOL) for everything. He seems to be good at talking the language of "the suits" and seems to be better at being a manager than doing the actual work.
Well here is the answer, which is also my GRAND FINALE!!!
if you visit his Elance Feedback profile and scroll all the way to the end you will notice TWO bids he put up:
#1 "Web Programming pdf to html conversion Beaux US$1,500.00"
AND...
#2 "Application Development PowerPC Emulator comsdev US$2,700.00"
If you visit both bids (bid 1 and bid 2 you will notice that he actually paid OTHER teams at Elance.com to do the dirty work for him.
I have very strong reason to suspect that he never wrote ANY part of any code of any kind! Instead, the people that actually STOLE the code from PearPC and PDF2HTML (read to verify) are the actual perpetrators!!!
How come nobody else established this connection?!
W.