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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..."
...popped the cherry!
Something's a little rotten w/that Cherry? That's the pits!!!
read the mirrored thread. it's well worth the time to examine it.
The difference between PearPc and CherryOs is that Cherry has personal info about hundreds (thousands?) of users who filled their contact form.
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.
Glad i didn't take this guy up on his bet.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
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!
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
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
Seems like the slashdotters in this thread figured this out first.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
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.
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?
if they removed any of the copyright information from the souce code files, and if they don't release the source code or make it available to the public, then they are in violation of the GPL.
.... THE GPL USES COPYRIGHT, IT DOES NOT IGNORE COPYRIGHT.
you're incorrect about naming provisions... GPL is a license, and to use copyrighted GPL code, you need to attribute the copyright holder. You may distribute/use/modify, etc... however, the original code must still be attributed to the copyright holder.
Once again -
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
he may lose his Cherry - say, in prison?
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Allegations are surfacing that "Windows 2000" which runs at 80% the speed of Windows NT on the X86 platform, is in fact not built on top of an X86 emulator and runs directly on the hardware.
Unknown host pong.
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
I like this quote:
"If it isn't, it will ruin my reputation," he said. "I will end up as a bartender. I do not want to be a bartender."
Can I get mine shaken, not stirred?
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).
for(long SPIRO_MULTIMAX_3000 = 0; SPIRO_MULTIMAX_3000 < 256; i++) {
- ...
}C'mon now, doesn't everybody?
Yeah, yeah, I post-incremented "i"...I guess it shows you how hard it is to even fake using that stupid variable name. :-)
From now on every piece of code I write is going to have a variable named SPIRO MULTIMAX 3000!
All,
To see the update from October 16th, click here.
To see the update from October 17th, click here.
I did a little investigating on CherryOS and I made several startling discoveries beyond its amazing similarity to PearPC. First, the individual who first posted on [H]ard|Forum about being given a "beta" test of CherryOS (that is, Dag33k), is in fact the same person as the alleged author of CherryOS, Arben Kryeziu. Interestingly, on HardForum Dag33k posted a link to the developer's response (alias: ArbenK) on the PearPC form. I have pretty sufficient evidence to suggest that these two people are one in the same. Look at the registration dates for Dag33k's account and Sourceforge's account for ArbenK. Coincidence?
HardForum's user information:
Sourceforge's user information:
Both dates, of course, are 2003-05-05.
Things get even more interesting, when we trap Arben Kryeziu in another lie. On the PearPC forum, he claims he doesn't speak any Albanian, as we see here:
But then strangely, earlier this year Arben (same screen name: arbishco) posted an Albanian translation for PJ IRC.
Now the shit really hits the fan. I started searching though his network of sites starting from bumpnetworks.com and found something even more interesting. If he's ripping off PearPC and violating the GPL, this is not the first time he's violated the GPL. On his bumpnetworks.com site, he has a link to piece of software he claims to have written, PdfConv (Link to image of description on website).
Now, as you'll see in the circled text, he claims it's based on Xpdf and VeryPDF. I went to VeryPDF and found their application PDF2HTML. Sure enough the product was GPL licensed and the source code is freely available (As seen in the following image). I downloaded trials of both to see how much different PdfConf was from PDF2HTML.
To Arben's credit, the interface is different from PDF2HTML, but identical in all other functions. The output from the same PDF file was almost identical. The only difference was that he took the time to remove the copyright notices from the generated html files. (As seen in this example graphical diff produced by WinMerge.) His output is on the left, PDF2HTML's output is on the right. Notice the only difference is the removal of the copyright notice.
I don't know if Arben changed any of PDF2HTML's code, but if he did, I'm not very confident he respected the GPL. From this, I have pretty good reason he is again disrespecting the GPL by pawning PearPC off as his own application. Finally, to summarize some other troublesome aspects regarding Arben, I found this slashdot post:
Sorry for all the inline images. I found this detective work fascinating, and I think its clear that Arben is perpetrating a fraud and that he personally has no respect for the GPL.
October 16th update:
I sent an email to Arben with a link to this page and a request to honor PearPC's GPL. This is the response I received:
From: CherryOS Team [mailto:mail@cherryos.com]
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 3:18 AM
To: 'Dean Beeler'
Subject: RE: PearPC is GPL (via Web form)
Hi Dean,
I am already talking to the PearPC.net webmaster, he will receive the trial as one of the first - because he treated us with respect and an open mind. I will let PearPC test the @#$@ out of CherryOS so you guys can try to prove your points. As you can see I have another product called www.vx30.com, and believe me I am not a person who wants to loose all his reputation. If you contact VeryPDF and ask them about our relationship - he will tell you that there was never one problem and I respected his rights and requests as soon they where submitted to me. I even can send you the communication between us.
I will and am respecting the PearPC GPL and the PearPC community! If people wont like the CherryOS emulation, then trash me then. If people don't want to purchase, they can use
This guy is way out there
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.
- Hubert
The difference between PearPc and CherryOs is that Cherry has personal info about hundreds (thousands?) of users who filled their contact form.
...who are now about to get an email from confirmation@apple-security-totallylegit.com asking them to confirm their credit card information in order to "ensure that their version of MacOS is fully cross-platform compliant".
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
That's utterly false. Every distribution gives credit to the base system GNU and the Linux kernel. You sir, are not up on your facts.
http://www.kernel.org/ and http://www.gnu.org/ are good places to start.
psst, use this code I ripped from PearOS and you'll be cool: #define SPIRO_MULTIMAX_3000 i
As a business owner, this just confirms what I've always felt about the GPL: it is anti-capitalist and prevents people from owning their own property. Who knows how much or how little code may have been taken; it could just be a few trivial routines. Nonetheless, the viral GPL license means that the many improvements this man has no doubt made no longer belong to him, but instead must be forced into the public domain under the provision's of the GPL. I'll never license my code under the GPL, and I encourage everyone who cares about freedom to do the same.
Well lets slashdot them to add to their problems...
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
I wish there was a /.TV channel so that this would play out in a 60minutes style camera ambush on this guy.
We have seen the forum equivalent of that ambush but it is just not the same as watching this guy squirm as he is caught in his many lies.
DF
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
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.
When I'm thinking of variable names my mind often turns to thoughts of Spiro Agnew. And then of course, he was developing Cherry OS so thoughts immediatley turn to the movie Cherry 2000 and if a sequel (obviosuly named Cherry 3000) would be released.
Then you come to the thought that this method is muti to the max, and out pops SPIRO MULTIMAX 3000 right in the middle of your code. I must have that happen several times a day myself, and I don't even work with code that has anything to do with cherries - I just find them a tasty snack.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Serves the PearPC right for giving away their source code then! WTF did they expect would happen? Sheesh, if you don't want someone to borrow your code for another project then DON'T GIVE AWAY THE SOURCE CODE.
They're supposed to do a source code diff for a press release?
Ummm... no.
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..
- 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!
The first thing I thought when I read the original /. story was that it sounded like Project David all over again.
Project David was allegedly an entirely new way of running Windows applications on Linux, covered on slashdot here which was suspiciously similar to the Wine project...
You're the idiot. Read the effin' dictionary under "sarcasm".
Daniel
Carpe Diem
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.
To give Wired a bit of credit, they actually continued to follow the story (including trying out a copy of CherryOS and then investigating and assisting in proving the fraud claims). See the article posted today.
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
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
"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.
Specks
Batteries not included
Favourite quote (paraphrased?) from a recent article: "Cherry OS is nothing like PearPC. PearPC is way slow."
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
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.
I worked at a small software company that made an corporate email management program. We sent out a press release with screen shots of a very colorful GUI that we abandoned before we ever got actual working code. Months later we sent out copies to various PC magazines to review. A bit later we won some sort of comparison test ( I think we had a longer list of features than anyone else , thus more bullet points ) including praise for how easy it was to install.
The funny thing was, the installation instructions were something like 1. Install IBM DB2. 2. click on install icon and wait for authorization key window to open. 3. Call xyz-tech for an install key.
At that point we would talk them through some godawfull install and configuration process that could go on for days. But the reviewer never called, never got a key, and presumably never installed it, and the review was illustrated with the press release screen shots.
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?
Management didn't do anything criminal in that instance, it was a surprise and sort of an embarrassment, because the project had changed direction by the time the review was out there.
Later however, the employees "fired" the boss by threatening to quit at which point the major investor replaced him. Eventually we got bought by a company that got bought by a major manufacture of high end router equipment painted Slashdot green.
We got paid in millions of dollars worth of Big Green Router Company stock when it was worth about $65 a share, then it went to $10 before we could sell but the IRS taxed it at the $65 value so that we all owed way more in taxes than it was worth. Then the Big Green Router Company outsourced the project to India and laid off the most senior people on the project. The bright spot is that my accountant says I'll be able to take $3000 off of my income tax for the next 92 years.
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.
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.
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".