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CherryOS Mac Emulator Resurfaces
Clash writes "Following its initial announcement and subsequent controversy last October, Mac emulator CherryOS has finally been released. Its creator, Arben Kryeziu, found himself in hot water last year amid claims the software was simply stolen from the open source PearPC project. With the code now under public scrutiny, it appears that such allegations are true. According to BetaNews, CherryOS boots up in the exact same manner as PearPC, and its error messages and source files are nearly identical. The emulator also includes MacOnLinuxVideo, which is the same driver used by PearPC to speed up graphics. The CherryOS configuration file also closely mirrors that used by PearPC. Trial download without registration found here."
Why would this be released? Isn't that sort of... illegal?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
If CherryOS is sued for this, won't this test the GPL furthermore? It might finally get a court to acknowledge that the GPL is not "unconstitutional" (*cough* SCO *cough)
-b0lt
got sig?
This is kind of off-topic, but...
I was always wondering how developers behind BSD-licensed products felt about this whole thing. Before you pounce on me, I know PearPC is a GPLed product, but the way I see it, the risks are pretty similar.
So, how would BSD developers feel about creating something, having it ripped off, and bandied about by someone else as if it was their own creation, with the original developers getting no credit? Has it happened? Did it cause you to think about switching to GPL, or maybe some other license?
It's said that if you change the line containing prom_bootmethod in the CherryOS configuration file from "auto" to "select", you're supposed to clearly see that it's PearPC. I haven't tried this out myself though, as I already believe in that it's the same thing. There's also word in a Neowin thread that CherryOS has simply upped the screen refresh rate to make it look faster.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The guy took someone else's work, changed it a little bit, and published it under his own name, without complying with the original authors conditions.
Whether you call that "stealing", "ripping off", "license violation" or whatever is neither here nor there, what does matter is that it's illegal under copyright law.
Hope he gets sued to hell.
It's up to the copyright holder whose intellectual property has been infringed to bring action upon MXS.
This is an excerpt i found interesting from the wired article about CherryOS (OCT 2004):
Kryeziu said CherryOS runs to 36,000 lines of code and was inspired by open-source Mac emulator PearPC, but is not in any way based on it.
"There's a big difference," he said. "They are way slow."
Yeah... way slow and identical to CherryOS(?)
sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not
Copyright is NOT bad always. I like to read Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, Charles Dickens, Anne Perry, Cynthia Voigt, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Weis & Hickman, Louis L'amour, C. S. Forester, P. G. Wodehouse, Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie, , etc.
All of these authors are(were) prolific (at least in some sense), and wouldn't have been nearly so if no one had been obligated to pay them for use of their writings. Anything that creates this kind of obligation is a copyright of some kind.
Asimov is a great example. He loved to write. Money wasn't even his main motivation for writing (according to him). He (again, according to him) worked 80 hours/week on writing sometimes. If he had had to keep teaching college chemistry and doing chemistry research (though he never really did that) to support himself and his family he wouldn't have had nearly as much time to write.
Burroughs is an example of someone that wrote almost solely (probably) for the money. If the money hadn't been there he would have kept looking for (other) work.
In these cases copyright is a GOOD thing for me, because otherwise I would have been deprived of many of their writings, and that would be a BAD thing.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
"our willingness to respect property is what makes it real."
Let me interpret this, since its mumbo-jumbo.
"If we all agree that a program is property, then its property, regardless of what those dirty hippies say".
No, seriously, if we all have to pretend that something is property, then its not property.
Why wouldn't you just say "Respect copyrights"? Or does that spoil the fiction of "Ideas = Property"?
It is so obvious. He has had previous GPL violations. There was a page that listed them, but I can't find it anymore. He has made a lot of other software that was based off other software under the GPL. Then there is also the fact that he originally claimed to have written from scratch and then there's the time he claimed that he fired a co-programmer. WTF?! He said he had written it from scratch! Then what about the bogus explanation about variable and function names "sounding the same" because there are only "certain ways to do things". The man is a liar - plain and simple.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
We don't have to put obscure bugs in the code to make sure it's ours. A simple strings analysis is sufficient.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
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I believe that the OS X eula you agree to when you install it states that OS X is to only be installed on Apple hardware. So yes, instlling OS X under PearPC or any other emulator is probably a violation of "Apple's software license."
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
However, you do have the possibility to dual-license your code. What I would do is offer my code both under the GPL, and have the possibility for one to purchase a non-GPL license for, say, a couple million dollars. Then you'd be able to sue GPL violators for that large sum.
(I ran out of replies I'm allowed to post in 24 hours, so I have to use AC):
/. is more deserving of your scruteny than I, but if it makes you feel like big to tell me that I shouldn't comment without 100% proof (even when I acknowledge that) instead of saying the exact same about the original article, be my guest. Although strangely, the comments you have already made tend to be along the lines of "It's not theft because nothing was taken," in which case debating anything related to the GPL with you would be a moot venture, as you seem to not care about ripped off work since the original author 'still has a copy.'
/., although your thousands of comments seem to indicate you're doing fine.
I already told you I don't have admin rights to an XP machine, but I did sign up at their site and downloaded the installer, which I ran on my work computer. Of course, I couldn't install it w/o admin rights, but both the EULA on their site and the EULA in the setup program clearly state the generic "This is not redistributable, you don't own it, it's intellectual property, etc" EULA that comes with every commercial program in which the end user is just "licensed" to use it. No where on the site, or in the installer does it say that it is just an installer for a GPL program, in fact, it claims the CherryOS is the software that is enabling a PC to emulate a G4.
If you have an XP machine, then prove me wrong instead of trying to sound high and mighty because you can't accept five simple words. Additionally, per your original reply, it's a free download, not $50. So go try it and prove me wrong, please, I don't have a machine to test it on but all indications (see above paragraph) indicate that it's is violating GPL. Also, please refrain from asking me loaded questions or comments in which I've already answered. I already told you I can't provide 100% proof that it violates the GPL because I don't have a test machine, but per my above comments, and TFA, it's fairly clear that there's a strong chance that it's not GPL compliant.
For that matter, why don't you point out that TFA uses the same logic I did, and comment about that? To summarize it, in case you didn't read it, it points out many similarities but offers no 100% proof:
"its error messages and source files are nearly identical. The emulator also includes MacOnLinuxVideo, which is the same driver used by PearPC to speed up graphics. The CherryOS configuration file also closely mirrors that used by PearPC."
Seems to me that a news website linked by
It makes sense now that I've read your other comments on this article. You're completely anal about the use of words like "theft", "stolen" and "as far as I know" and can't accept anything but the dictionary terms, which in almost all cases do not apply to technology (see: patents, p2p file sharing). If you really do have a problem with speculation and non-websters use of words, I don't know how you survive on
Tell me if I've summarized your overall argument:
'Who cares because he didn't literally break into the PearPC developers computers and steal it, and I don't believe anything even when strong evidence is presented but I'll tell everyone else how wrong they are.'
I really would like you to return to this thread some time and prove me wrong. Really. Put me in my place. Don't argue word usage or GPL, just show me that he didn't violate the GPL instead of flooding this thread with "Nobody's taken anything." and other SPECULATIONS. (oh wait, literally no one has removed the bits from anyone's hard drive so it't not theft at all!)