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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?
Sounds like some of the people on slashdot are developing respect for intellectual property. Be careful, our willingness to respect property is what makes it real. If too many people start to respect intellectual property, it will become as real as normal property.
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?
Why is this fraudster getting so much free press? It would be different if the headline read "Stolen code illegally released", but as it is you might think CherryOS is something other than someone elses stolen property.
At least this time the schmuk has taken the "trouble" of removing all references to PearPC in the binary. Sadly he's too stupid to remember to change the configuration file format, or the hard coded MAC address that PearPC uses for the emulated NIC.
but selling a program ripped of from a open source app violating the GPL should be.
Or didnt your even RTFSummary?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
...in Russia, a new site called "ALLOFPEARPC" is selling the software for mere pennies. Apparently, there's no law against selling it, you know...
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
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!
Yes but stealing someone elses source code and releasing a commercial product based on it is illegal. You need a valid license from the copyright holder to distribute someone elses work.
Yes Emulation is fine , Although Stealing someones work and claming it as your own work is unethical and illegal in the way that it violates PearPCs license . This is not a DMCA type nonsence Copyright issue , This is blatently rebranding someones work without permission and selling it as yourown .
No matter how you feel about Intelectual property , This is immoral , unethical and illegal and rightly so
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Which is somethign they have. PearPC is released under the GPL. This does permit redistribution. It's the main point.
Unless they're breaching the terms of the GPL without permission from the original authors of the software, this is legal. They may be breaching these terms, but that's still to be proven.
You mean besides lying about it, and not telling people they have a right to the source code?
(He should have supplied the License allong with the binary)
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I saw that Miranda had been ripped off for (at least) a second time.
Going to all that trouble just to rip people off and install spyware. It's fucking sad.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The open source community still has it. No loss of property, therefore no theft.
For people who believe in sharing, GPL zealots are incredibly possesive about intellectual property.
The GPL doesn't permit just distributing binaries wihtout informing the receivers what the License terms are.
They should atleast put a notice with it saying 'This contains GPL code, send your request for the source here:'
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Sound. There is no sound support on this version. We will be releasing an update that will include sound capabilities as soon as it becomes available.
As soon as it becomes available in PearPC?
--
I dont think anyone is arguing that. The problem is YOU MUST GIVE BACK. If you take GPL code and modify it, and ship it, then you MUST provide the modified source. If CherryOS does this then no one can complain.
The distinction that your missing, is that he violated the GPL when he didn't acknowledge the PearPC work that he derivied (if he actually did any deriving (other than just changing every instance of "PearPC" with "CherryOS" (which any of us on slashdot could easy accomplish with 5 lines of perl or shell script)))
He didn't enhance the product in any way, he just renamed it.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Under the GPL any software can be "hijacked" and sold on the commercial standpoint as another name.
Yes you can sell it under another name and ask a billion for it... But you still have to acknowledge that there is GPL code in it and have to supply the source code upon request.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I think that comparing Mac and CherryOS is basically comparing apples and pears.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Sad as it is, these losers DO have a valid license, the GPL. Since they obviously did no actual work, there are no changes to the source that they would have to give back.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
If cherryos violates GPL, is someone going to actually try to do something about it? Where's the lawsuit? If not, the GPL might as well not exist.
Found a good link with info from both cherryos developers and pearlpc developers. here
TruePunk | Games
More exactly, you can sell a program ripped of from GPL project. But then you also have to provide source code and grant your customers the right to re-distribute as specified in the GPL.
If you don't do that, you are violating the GPL and asking to be sued.
If you follow the GPL, others can re-distribute YOUR program which will limit the price you can charge without being undercut by others. Linux distributions are a good example for this:
Companies like Novell/SuSE can get away with charging up to 100 Euros for a nice package of installation disks, manuals and some installation support. But you won't find a 1000 Euro distribution without some proprietary software add-ons or extended support included.
As opposed to the server versions of Windows, where the OS alone may cost some thousand dollars.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Kryeziu said he's under unfair scrutiny because people refuse to believe the product is real.
"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."
I guess being a theif is better then slinging booze.
TruePunk | Games
Happens all the time. If anyone claims CherryOS is a bit suspect perhaps the same could be said about a number of the *BSDs. Ok , he's been a bit underhand but as far as I can see he's done nothing wrong and hasn't violated the GPL.
That's where you're wrong not only for the OBVIOUS reason "if you fork a GPL software it must remain GPL" (and I just downloaded the installer and afaik the code IS NOT distributed along), but also because he denied having forked PearPC, where the GPL forces to keep the copyleft of the original authors (ok you can still say "it's my software I coded it all alone last saturday" and let the copyleft in the code, but then everybody can read it if it's GPL'd, so I think giving credit to the legitimate authors is something that the GPL implies)
Even if the PearPC licence had been more permissive (MIT or BSD style), he would still be a moron who cannot even admit he just took the code.
In the current case however, he's just a thief and I hope the PearPC developpers will get some support to sue and get the GPL tested in an US court.
It's up to the copyright holder whose intellectual property has been infringed to bring action upon MXS.
Perhaps i should of made myself more clear
as you really are allowed to take someones work under the gpl and use it with your own name , however you must abide by the copyleft , and not claim it all as your own code and keep your changes free
If i wished to sell a version of Bash on cd called FISH (fidel shell) or something I could , but if i were to not make the source avaliable and totaly hide any referce to the GPL claming it was all my doing , then i would be breaking the terms . I do appoligise that my lack of clarity has caused you to go off on a rant about the GPL
you should take a long read through it someday , its good to know your rights
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
However, you do need to include the relevant copyright notices in the source.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
No he didn't "just for it", he clearly violated the GPL (section 2b):
"You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
Which means he CANNOT charge for this (among other issues like the source that are dealt with in later sections), which is what he is doing ($50 a pop).
Clones are people two.
Absolutely. And the way to deal with it is to prosecute them for copyright violation. They have used the GPL'd code in a way that neither copyright law nor the GPL permits, and they should be taken to court for it.
They have to offer the source (even if not modified) if they distribute binaries. There is an exemption in the GPL if it is really small scale distribution (ie your neighbour) but they are aiming to high for that.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I don't know about any of that. I think it's more of "someone's taking from our community" is the feeling. Either this guy is a moron or someone bigger and darker is out there funding this guy's legal defense.
It should be pretty obvious that this guy will have legal action taken against him at any moment. He has no reputation as a business owner that I can tell so he has nothing to lose. But this case would have interesting value to those businesses out there who have and who would use GPL code in their stuff. I don't think I'm being paranoid or dramatic when I suggest the possibility is there. After all, isn't it Microsoft that ultimately funded SCO's legal machine? Or at least partly?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and I know that no one could disagree with that.
With a pear?! Now that would've been nasty. But I doubt his ass is pleural.
Note that there is no requirement to credit the original authors, which some people seem to believe.
I think he's referring to Section 3c... which only applies to noncommercial distribution of binaries made from unmodified source code.
The company is still swearing up and down that it does not contain any pearPC source code.
Yes many people have found things that are simular (to the point that yes this seems like a license violation), but until the developers can audit the code, or they are taken to court, there is not enough proof (legal proof?) that this is a license violation.
They do not claim to use any other source code, and after downloading the applicaton, their license is not related to or reference the GPL at all.
As for the suppying the source, I never understood why people belive that they need to have a link available to the source online to comply with the GPL. Hell if a company wanted to they could supply you the source in the form of a print out (or alphabit soup) and they would comply with the terms of the GPL license.
TruePunk | Games
They *did* change the source, silly. How do you think they managed to change everything that said PearPC to CherryOS?
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
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
This guy is a serial GPL abuser:
VX30 ad stats is a rip of phpadsnew.
VX30 itself is nothing more than a wrapper for mpeg1 and Ogg, ripped from Jorbis
Some people have no shame...
Ok, stolen? We can't have it both ways. If it isn't stealing music, but copyright infringment instead, how is this any different? Just cause it's not the **AA being ripped off it's stealing now? Gimme a break.
Sure, but they could put the GPL near the end of a click-through EULA box (and who reads those?). The GPL only specifies that they may not add additional restrictions - they are free to add a load of definitions in meaningless legalese at the top of it (i.e. the bit people actually read).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Section 3c:
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with such
an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
This means that if you get a binary with offer you can give a copy to your neighbour (no money involved, noncommercial) and just supply him with a copy off the original offer (from the guy you got it from) instead of offering the source code yourself.
So if cherryOS was distributed noncommercially they could just put a note on it saying you can get the source at pearpc. But only if they got the binaries from pearpc and it seems they made their own.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
The last two links of the summary are fugged. One should be for the other, and vice versa. Don't editors check links anymore? Oh, I must be new here.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
For some reason I was thinking the person I orginially was replying to was talking about the emulators in general, not just cherryos.
It must be too early.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Come on ... where is the cry when Apple lifted BSD and never gave Aqua back to it? This is a joke. You can't have it both way. If this company delivers a Mac-on-PC emulator that is 20% better than PearPC it's worth $50. That 20% could include useful things missing from PearPC like a real installer, documentation and support.
Hi Arben, no it's not ok.
PearPC is GPL, which is a very different licence, and Apple have given code back *even though they have no obligation to do so*.
Stop trolling.
PS, to say this junk is worth 50USD is laughable, I wouldn't trust anyone who rips off software in such a hack-handed way and tries to pass it off as his own. I certainly wouldn't run a binary on my computer from this company - wouldn't be surprised if the installer is a vector for spyware/adware and that's where they make their money.
It is illegal. Just not stolen.
As to whether CherryOS is illegal or not - Well, the only way to determine this is to acquire a copy and check for violations of the GPL.
No, they wouldn't comply with the GPL. GPL explicity requests that source code must be supplied in the form used to make the binaries and all build scripts or other things used, must be also supplied. For example, if you distribute an rpm you must provide the scr.rpm.
The story did renew my interest in a Mac emulator.
Those in the know - which one would you recommend, PearPC or MOL?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I am a lawyer - although copyright and IP are not my main area - but one of the problems any GPL violation suit is going to have is damages. Courts like to measure damages in money and if you're claim is that he stoled the thing that I was giving away and didn't offer to give it away too - well - lots of courts will ask - where are your damages? Exactly how much money did it lose you? I understand that there are other issues that are important to the community and the authors - but courts like to see actual damages to a plaintiff. Let me be clear - I'm not saying you can't win a suit for violation of the GPL (maybe someone already has - I don't know) but the issue of damages will be a hard on for a court to deal with. Believe it or not - courts don't like to rule on strictly technical violations.
Even worse, if someone doesn't step up and fight, it could set a precedent and make it open season for Open Source.
Is this the first time a high-profile alleged breach of an Open Source licence has happened?
Suing journalists isn't cool?
Section 3a of the GPL:
"Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange"
Emphasis mine.
Stumbling in the dark
I hear slavering of jaws
Eaten by a grue.
"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"?
Patents as such aren't wrong. It's the current implementation of both.
The idea behind patents is:
1) Work hard or some novel idea
2) Get it to work.
3) Patent it and start selling it without anybody in the way.
4) Profit!!! - for funding more research on more novel ideas.
How it actually works is:
1) Find some obvious thing nobody thought to patent because it's so blatantly obvious
2) Patent it. Getting it to work is optional.
3) Wait till a bunch of people use it, then sue them.
4) Profit!!! - for funding more lawyers.
Copyright is similarly screwed up, though in most cases significantly higher degree of creativity is needed. Copyrighting silence, copyrighting a single black dot isn't as notorious as patenting triple click. Although in the Trademark field things are VERY screwed up. (site Mobil-X shut down because it's too similar to "Asterix" ????)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I think punch cards suit this definition. They are machine readable and were used as customarily interchange medium 30 years ago.
Because copyrights protect a particular code. Patents protect a process. Accordingly, copyrights enable competition. While patents destroy it.
The most egregious example in my mind of a software patent is a Japanese company's patent on linking a help file to a help icon. There is no specific code involved. ANY help icon linked to ANY help file is in violation of the patent.
Copyrights actually encourage competition, because if someone codes a great word processor, for example. Some other coder might try to make a different and better one, with his own code.
But patents stop any competition, because nearly every computer process can be patented and monopolized. Think about, right now nearly every piece of software you use is in violation of that Japanese help icon patent.
And think of all the other trivial processes your computer does that are or soon will be patented. Once you start eliminating all those processes, you end up with a pretty looking empty box under your desk. Unless of course Apple obtained a business method patent on pretty looking boxes under desks.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It does not have to be online. The GPL requires you to provide the source code to those who get the binaries from you (e.g., on the same CD or from the same web site) or to include a written offer to give the source code to any third part who requests it. This is stated in paragraph 3 of the GPL.
So the source code does not have to be available online, even if this is a convenient way for some companies to comply with the license. It can also be sent on CD-ROMs or floppy disks to those who request it. The online distribution happens to be cheaper in many cases, but this is not a requirement.
Wrong. In paragraph 3 b) of the GPL, you can see that it requires a "complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code [...] on a medium customarily used for software interchange". Furthermore, the same paragraph 3 adds: "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.". So distributing the software in some obfuscated form would be a violation of the GPL.
-Raphaël
Of course it can't set a precedent.
One party's choice not to pursue a violation of their copyright does not invalidate other copyrights.
Given that the summary says they compared the source for cherryos to pearpc, I'd have to say that they are distributing the source with it. Whether they are complying with the rest of the GPL or not, you'll have to look and see.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This poses some real questions:
Will the PearPC team sue this guy for violating the GPL, now that the product has come to the market?
Does the GPL have full legal respect in court or will the courts treated it as a "delete your evaluation copy in 24 hours" readme file?
I'm very curious how the PearPC team will respond to this.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Couldn't you force them to pay you the money they would have had to spend if they had someone write it for them legally?
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Not a legal precedent, obviously, but if unscrupulous developers see there's no retribution for doing this, they're just going to do it again.
Doesn't FSF, GNU, EFF or other free sofware advocates give legal help to PearPC developers sueing CherryOS's? The case would also be of great importance to the GPL as it would a precedent of it's applicability. AFAIK the GPL as never been "tested" in court.
This is why I believe in Source Code Escrow for closed source projects {though I'd favour a simple outright ban on Closed Source even more}. If you aren't willing to give out your source code to every user of your software, then you should be forced to place a sealed copy in the care of some trusted third party. In the event of any dispute, this copy can be unsealed, and the dispute resolved by independent experts. Likewise, the very same day your copyright expires {whether as a matter of time, or sooner if a court so orders} this copy can be unsealed to ensure its entry into the Public Domain.
The GPL also stipulates in clause 3 that the source code must be "machine-readable" and "on a medium customarily used for software interchange". So you might be expected to produce an "alphabit soup reader" in court.
Don't forget that there isn't really such a thing as "violating the GPL". The GPL is a licence to do something above and beyond your "fair dealing" rights -- determined by the courts -- applicable to copyright law. If you aren't in compliance with the GPL, and what you're doing isn't considered "fair dealing", then you're in breach of plain old copyright law.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
http://www.imblaze.com/index.asp
IM blaze is literally just GAIM, with the source code made unavailable, you pay for it AND it spams your friends with network marketing bullshit.
I've emailed them again and again demanding the source code as I'm legally entitled to, and they ignore me. However, its really up to the Gaim people to sue. Which perhaps they have decided against at this stage. Its a shame, theres probably a fat million each in there for the gaim developers. And possibly potential jailtime.
Someone *NEEDS* to send these people a DMCA notice. If they ignore it... jailtime!
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Hasn't this already happened, with another piece of software? I'm struggling to remember any details, so this post isn't exactly helpful - does anyone else remember recently a court ruling in favour of some GNU/GPL thing? I remember this comment (about the precident it sets) being made :-/
-2A
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
If he took PearPC, and completely rewrote the code, he doesn't have to release it under the GPL does he? Even if they have the same library names he wrote all the code, therefore, he doesn't need to show anyone.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
12345
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
The way I see it, he didn't mean a legal precedent as such, but that if people see someone breaching the GPL and getting away with it, they may be inclined to see if they can get away with it too.
If music were GPLed (as it was for centuries), making personal copies (as was done ever since tape recorders and radios came into existence) would not be copyright infringment.
What CherryOS did was beyond this. They pretended that someone elses "music" was their own and sold it as their own. That's plagiarizing which has been frowned upon since people put pen to paper.
Yes. It's stealing and no there is no conflict.
Fair enough--I apologise for the tone of my reply.
I wouldn't worry too much about unscrupulous companies making a habit of ripping off code from GPL projects--since each project has a different copyright holder, it's hard to say in advance who is likely to retaliate with a lawsuit and who is not.
As long as they follow the GPL rules, they can still 'release and sell' a product based on a GPL application.
Lots of companies are doing that.. Ever hear of Redhat or IBM?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Right, well, a lawyer would have fun with that little bit.
Machine-readable = OCR. I'll print the source code in OCRA font size 10 to a PDF. Hardware-based OCR scanners can read that at over 99.999% accuracy.
Medium Customarily Used for Software Interchange = 360K 5.25" floppy disk drive, DOS formatted, the PDF gzipped and split into sections. For a typical program, that's about 500 disks worth.
On top of that, you have to manually build the source. No scripts, no make, no autoconf.
That'd all be within the letter of the GPL, right?
Merely breaching a licence agreement is not a crime.
There is a breach of the licence though, which would allow the copyright owners to sue. As it is GPL, it might be difficult to establish loss to claim damages, but it should be possible to get an injunction to prevent future breaches (breach of said injunction would be illegal).
Well, I too was excited to try out the new cherryOS :) But alas, it it very unstable, at least on win xp pro sp2. I will keep posting here to let everyone know how it installs on each os. But for now NOT STABLE on xp pro. Too Bad, it seems to have alot of potential. I will test 2000pro next and see what happens, but for now my opinion is.....call it LemonOS
I was thinking in terms of emulation in general, not the GPL implications. Hey we all put the foot in the mouth sometimes...
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Apple licensed PARC's GUI and hired the PARC inventors away from Xerox. Apple certainly did not "snag" Xerox's windowing GUI or try to pass it off as their own. It was their own. Where the hell have you been for the last 2 decades, troll?
It's odd that they were "hacked" and keep getting "hacked". Who in the freaking world are their administrators first off? They should be fired. Second reading the article that said that both apps had the same vairable name "SPRIO MULTIMAX 3000", and the CherryO'Crap guy saying that they had not used "any" code from PearOS is just an astronomical possibility. That programmer for CherryO'Crap should go buy a lottery ticket. Finally, the reason that it is just now being released is because they got caught first and so they took their "OS" off the market so their lame ass programmers could go back and change the code as much as possible to no resemble Pear. My two pesos on the matter
you forgot subsections b and c which allow for someone to sell the object code to you, without the source code If one wanted to they could sell your software for $1,00,000 without source and then offer to provide the code to anyone that has both purchased it and has asked.
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
This sounds like it would be a good idea to register GPL projects with the Copyright Office (assuming we're playing in the US), if only to open a route for statutory damages.
What I'm wondering is, how well might an argument to the public interest fly, especially if the plaintiff elects to recover statutory damages instead of actual damages? (I.e. would this make the court more likely to consider the damages from a punitive angle instead of a loss-recovery angle?)
No, because:
a) The GPL specifies that build scripts need to be included
b) 360K disks are no longer a medium *customarily* used for software interchange
c) while you could argue that printed text is readable by a small number of specialised machines, a judge would take into account the usual meaning of the words in the context in which they are being used... and laugh in your face.
Gerv
Do as you will. These are pictures of Arben and his girlfriend:
http://www.crystalkai.com/us/index.html
Personally, I think he's doing this on purpose so someone will sue him and he'll be the martyr that tests the GPL.
Wikileaks, no DNS
There is a trivially simple way to address damages that fits entirely into the spirit of the GPL. The license specifically requires that any modifications to the source also be open source. So, when suing for damages, you sue for unrestricted access to the source and any associated legal costs. The purpose of the GPL is not to generate revenue, it's to guarantee that the code remains open.
So you have a CHERRY, that is really a BANANA because its stolen from a PEAR, to run an APPLE.
Damn now I'm hungry.
Anyways the sad thing is; quite a few people will probably buy CherryOS (especially if it comes in a box) because they don't know any better. I hope CherryOS meets a horrible demise, along with The Video Professor.
Stealing is about wrongful changing of ownership. When one steals a toaster from a department store, that toaster in effect ceases to be the property of the store and wrongfully becomes property of the theif, and there are laws to return ownership back to the rightful party.
This is a contradiction in terms. A stolen toaster does not become the property of the theif. If it did, it wouldn't be stolen, nor would the store have a right to have it returned. It's still the store's property. It's just that the thief has taken unlawful posession of the toaster. If you're going to be commenting on the subtleties and nuances of property law, you should at least use basic terminology correctly.
they get the soul ability
Let's keep religion out of this, ok?
However when they modify it, rebrand it and repackage it they are claiming those rights that are in effect the intelectual property. They are claiming distribution rights and claiming authorship.
Yeah, but they didn't remove anything tangible from the posession of the "rightful owners", which is always the distinction that music piracy apologists use when they cry "copyright infringement is NOT theft!".
What would be equivilant is taking a good, but little known song, then putting it onto a CD and claiming that it is mine
No, that's plagiarism.
The grandparent is correct. What they did is copyright infringement, and is every bit as much a theft, nor more and no less, than music piracy.
Actually, PearPC does not hardcode the MAC address, it's a configurable option in the config file.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Most of the comments here are about how this guy ripped off PearPC. While that may be true ( and I personally believe it), can anyone provide some hard numbers on how it WORKS? Does Panther run smoothly? Is it easy to use? Can I actualy see how OS X is on my PC? Any reviews out there? ( Yes I googled it, and found old references..) Any answers?
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
I don't know if CherryOS qualifies, but a license-compliant, vendor-supported CherryOS is A Good Thing.
If I read my GPL correctly, vendors are free to sell support contracts, write add-on utilities that make installation and maintenance easier, and in some cases replace entire binaries provided it's 100% original code in the replacement binary. This is after all how most Linux vendors stay in business.
Oh, and they are supposed to not claim authorship of what's not theirs.
A few months ago I wrote a letter to this effect to the CherryOS people. When they start doing all of the above, I'll give them serious consideration and possibly even $$$.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
started playing around with it and so far the emulation is extremely good! the installation runs similar to a 500MHz G4 on a 2.4GHz P4. The only problem so far is setting up the partition to be able to start up from.. looks like it is going to need an openfirmware hack or something...
Slashdot needs a new abbreviation:
RTFL!
Apparently the new cool thing is to offer your loud and dogmatic opinion on a licence when you have absolutely no idea what it says, because you were apparently too lazy even to look up a summary written in small words.
Please, type GPL into Google and click the little search button. It's not hard.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It is plagiarism (assuming CherryOS did copy a large amount of PearPC code). It is more serious than ordinary copyright infringement since it claims other people's work as one's own, and is unethical by most standards. If a substantial amount of code is copied into your program, I think credits should be given whenever possible even if you are not legally required to do so (e.g. the code is in the public domain). Most ordinary people will call this "stealing", but I agree that we had better call it the right name.
Maybe CherryOS is just emulating PearOS.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Because copyrights are healthy and patents, particularly patents on intangibles like software, are unhealthy. They're both artificial constructions of law, but their effects on people are quite different.
Your question is a bit like asking: This looks very like one of the food threads that run here regularly, but with everyone on the other side of the line. If fresh fruit & veg is so right, why are McDonalds burgers so wrong?
Copyrights promote creativity and competition. Patents punish creativity and competition. (And intangibles patents are worse as they also attack the basic human right of self-expression.)
-- Jamie
I would suggest that damages be equal to the amount of money taken in via the sale of CherryOS, and if the product is registered (probably not), then it would be treble damages. Add attorney fees on top of that. MXS's violations of the GPL make his gains illicit, and so the ill-gotten gains should be turned over to the copyright holders.
Not that I'm a legal scholar, but within my understanding of the law, it seems this is about the furthest they could get, not to mention a reasonable (to me) line of thought for the courts to follow.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Something that, as far as I know, CherryOS isn't doing.
And as far as you know, they might be doing this.
IF this guy wanted to create a closed-source PearPC installer, in which he acknowledged that the PearPC software is free and GPL, and that the close source software is just an easy to use installer for PearPC. But he isn't, so he's violating GPL.
Have you bought a copy? How do you know he isn;lt doing this?
IIRC, the programmer who stole PearPC's code was fired, in the author's own words, he "fired his ass off".
Now let's suppose the author didn't want to start everything from scratch. So i think he just kept the configuration stuff, and changed only the internals (after all, Linux is from the outside more or less the same than Unix, isn't it?)
IANAL, but I suppose (someone correct me if I'm wrong) I can look at a GPL code, jot down a list of classes, what they do, and implement my own, without even copying a single byte from it.
So i'm for examining the source code and comparing it.
And downloading copyrighted songs and movies is copyright infringement in the eyes of slashbotters? Please stop the fanboyism, guy isn't stealing code, he's infringing on a copyright by not redistributing code and his changes.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Medium Customarily Used for Software Interchange = 360K 5.25" floppy disk drive, DOS formatted, the PDF gzipped and split into sections. For a typical program, that's about 500 disks worth.
Yeah, that would be so slick. That way when someone asks them for the source, they have to ship them 500 floppy disks...
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Imagine that this "company" had taken the leaked MS source code and tried to pass it off as their proprietary creation? MS would have busted them up in court by now.
If this "company" had release CherryOS as a for-pay product but kept it under the GPL, there would have been no problems. However, what this company has done is taken the GPled PearPC code and made a few changes and then release it as their own proprietary work and have locked the source code away. Clearly that is not allowed with the GPL. Legally the company can do two things. They can change their license to the GPL and make the source code and all changes available under the GPL or they can stop distributing the software. No other software company would sit idle and let some other company take their work and pass it as their own, so why should GPL authors be expected to do that? If you want to use copyrighted works you need to adhere to the copyright terms. The GPL gives you far more rights than standard copyright; however there are still a few "rules" that need to be followed in order to be compliant.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
There is a _huge_ difference between code reuse and stealing code. If this guy simply was trying to sell CherryOS (really just the GPLed PearPC) but he kept it as a GPLed work, there would be no legal problems for him.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
While your example's not bad in a sort of hypothetical sense, the Japanese patent you're referring to doesn't exist.
That patent (which belongs to Matsushita) covers a process whereby you click a help icon, then drag it over another item. On dropping the help icon, you are given context-sensitive help about the second item.
The patent is here (albeit in Japanese) with further explanation in English here. It's not nearly as simple as "ANY help icon linked to ANY help file."
You probably want the last one.
dam; mother, female
dam: used to block rivers
damn; curse
Let's see... He didn't do it the first time, and no where on his site does it have a GPL notice (not that it's required to). If the guy aggressively argued that he didn't use PearPC the first time until he was faced with undeniable proof (prev /. story), why would he suddenly change face and go legit?
Being faced with undeniable proof may well persuade him to go legit.
With the code now under public scrutiny, it appears that such allegations are true.
So it appears that the code is available. It may or may not be in a manner compliant with the GPL.
Your opinion may vary, but it's not the opinion of the article and the guy that wrote is has lost all credibility ever since October when "Ooops, turns out I totally ripped off PearPC... back to the lab to make sure I've obfuscated the code some more..."
Or perhaps "Back to the lab to make sure I follow the letter of the GPL". He wants to sell it. He might decide to rely on people not being aware of their rights.
Regardless, if English is your first language you should know that the qualifier "As far as I know" (which you quoted and used), means exactly what I ment it to say: "As far as I know." It means I'm not 100% sure.
It's a fallcy. You don't know whether you're right or not. You can't go from a lack of proof of the opposite to a reasonable belief that something is the case. I don't like to make allegations about people without proof. Provide proof that it violates the GPL.
Actually, it was Mobilix which was considered too similar to Obelix. Still very bad, but not as far out as you make it appear.
A few minutes of hex searching revealed that Arben was not diligent enough in removing the embedded images from PearPC's code. In CherryOS.exe, at address hex 0xF9140, you'll find a PearPC gif (see attached link) that is the ChangeCD image used in PearPC (in the stable build I have, at address 0xA6330) (see second attached link). Any questions?
t all.png/
http://66.42.197.91/FromPearPC.gif/
http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/screenshots/osx_ins
I thought you couldn't "steal" something if you were just making a copy of it?
As usual, in CherryOS articles, copyright infringement of GPL code mysteriously becomes theft. In P2P piracy articles, copyright infringement mysteriously becomes an okay natural culture movement.
Why sue CherryOS? Wouldn't that be the same as suing copyright infringers on P2P, which nobody here likes (even though it's what Slashdot suggested back in 2000)? What's the difference? It's intellectual property in both cases.
I thought we were against intellectual property. I thought we were okay with copying such property.
You can't argue for piracy and copyright infringement against the RIAA and then stomp your feet when someone does it against a GPL project. It's hypocritical and illustrates the weak basis the pro-piracy argument has--it's just a self-serving argument to keep the free ride going.
So if you don't know, then why are you even posting anything? What makes you so special that we should listen to you instead of the facts?
MacOS X?
NERDS!!!!
That's not a risk, it's the point of BSD licensing.
You most certainly cannot use someone elses code under the BSD license and pretend you wrote it, which is what's happened in this case.
If Pear had been released under the BSD license, the 'developers' of CherryOS would still be in violation of the license by claming they wrote it and that it's an origional work.
If you don't care if someone takes your work and gets full credit for it, then there is no point in licensing it under the BSD license, just release it as Public Domain and be done with it, but it's rather implausible to claim that those who release code under the BSD license don't care about getting credit when that's the one big restriction it has.
Illegal, as in copyright infringement? As in piracy?
/. position on this.
I'm confused about the
Remember, copyright infringement isn't theft. Right, guys?
" Nope, from the moment you modified the original source code to replace it with your own code, yours are still derived work even it does not have any source code in the latest release."
this is sco's ladder theory and it is incorrect. if the final code does not contain any of the original work, it is not "derived." there are standard tests for code comparison [eg the abstraction, filtration comparison test]. it does help your defence in court though to clean room the development in case of any accidental code similarities.
"Although I am not sure if Linux should be known as a derived work of Minix."
it is not. linus built it on a "framework" of minix. in other words, the computer he used for the coding process ran minix. other than that they are not the same os. minix is a microkernel os and linux uses a monolithic kernel. even ast [creator of minix] agrees that linux is not derived from minix. it is a new, posix compliant operating sytem.
sum.zero
According to Slashdot, piracy isn't theft. Copyright infringement isn't theft. He can't be a thief if he's just doing what all other copyright infringers do, and since most people here seem to be okay with P2P piracy, they would also have to be okay with this kind of piracy, or else the position would be hypocritical.
What would be equivilant is taking a good, but little known song, then putting it onto a CD and claiming that it is mine
... the copyright holder remains the copyright holder. Plagerism, which is claiming authoriship of someone elses work, is theft ... you have stolen credit and acclaim for the work (at the very least) and probably usurped the original author's rights to restrict reproduction and distribution (copyright) as well.
... unless one has a specific, political ax to grind in obfuscating the terminology.
... anyone can make a derivative work against the author's will, but the author always gets a good percentage of any and all proceeds of any such derivative work automatically, is given prominent credit for their contribution, and equally prominently disclaimed from any permission or endorsement of the derivative work. But that is a discussion for another day ... for now copyright is what we have, so I work within it and respect it (if not its draconian extentions vis-a-vis the DMCA and similiar laws).
... except theoretical income they might have made had the copyright violator bought a license, something they often never would have. Indeed, sometimes they gain from it, as the violator likes the work so much they go out and buy it (case in point: in my movie-downloading days ... a brief 2-day stint years ago ... I downloaded the Fellowship of the Ring, loved the movie, and broke my DVD-boycott to buy the movie because I felt the creator deserved my money for my having seen it).
No, that's plagiarism.
Yes, it's plagerism.
The grandparent is correct. What they did is copyright infringement, and is every bit as much a theft, nor more and no less, than music piracy.
No, you're missing the point. Perhaps because you philosophically wish to call copyright violation theft because it offends your notion of right or wrong (it does mine as well, in most cases), or perhaps because the people you're responding to haven't clarified the issue enough.
What these people did was both copyright violation and plagerism. Copyright violation is not theft
The one is not theft, the other is. It really is that simple
Plenty of reasonable people believe in the current copyright regime. Plenty of other reasonable people think it should be reformed or revamped, scrapped entirely. No reasonable person suggests that plagerism is okay, that a creator of a work should have their identity and work claimed by another. Most of the ideas for replacing copyright involve codifying current scholarly requirements for citation and bans of plagerism into law. Personally, I favor a weak copyright with manditory licensing
Stealing credit is, well, theft. The original creator loses credit and has their rightful acclaim usurped, along with whatever legal rights to their work they might have had. Replicating something without the creator's permission is not theft or stealing in any non-doublespeak sense of the word. The creator loses nothing
Both plagerism of a copyright worked and unauthorized duplication or distribution of a copyrighted work are illegal, but they are as different from each other as spraypainting graffitti and punching someone in the nose. You may get fined or go to jail for both, but the moral and ethical implications are entirely different, and the law sees them differently with good reason, no matter the rhetoric from the peanut gallery.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Going to all that trouble just to rip people off and install spyware. It's fucking sad.
When I once said this about Kazaa a few years ago, Slashdotters modded me down.
Why is ripping people off on P2P okay, but this is bad? Because it's a GPL project instead of a nameless artist from a record company?
I'm no licensing guru by any stretch of the imagination, but...
I thought one of the main differences between GPL and licenses like the BSD license was that GPL prevented companies from taking the code and selling it as their own. Isn't that essentially what's being done here?
It's still hypocritical to complain about this being "unethical" and "unauthorized distribution" when P2P is given something of a pass in Slashdot discussion.
You're arguing that they don't have the right to distribute this. Uh, yeah. Welcome to what it feels like to be someone whose music or software or movies are copied on P2P networks without your permission.
piracy is pretty widely regarded as a combination of infringement, theft and fraud. not all pirates steal non-material goods. in fact, most pirates primarily steal physical goods. hence, theft. the term piracy is, imho, misapplied to p2p filesharing.
copyright infringement isn't theft as it is not defined as theft. there is a legal definition behind those words, as there is behind theft. also, copyright infringement only occurs after a user has exceeded fair use provisions.
i know you're trolling, but i couldn't resist the urge to educate. i'm a teacher at heart.
sum.zero
I thought we were against going after individual copyright infringers on Slashdot? Funny how that position shifts when it's a GPL project instead of a faceless record company.
That's where you're wrong not only for the OBVIOUS reason "if you fork a GPL software it must remain GPL" (and I just downloaded the installer and afaik the code IS NOT distributed along)
That, in and of itself, does not infringe on the GPL. The source code does not have to be distributed with the binary, but it has to be made available upon request. That's my understanding, anyhow.
I'm not defending the "author" of CherryOS - he's clearly in the wrong. I think you should understand the GPL more clearly before you rip on someone about it.
Heck with all that stuff. I'm still laughing my ass off that they're claiming Altivec emulation. HAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAA!! I'd LOVE to see you try to emulate Altivec on an x86 chip! 162 128-bit vector instructions. SSE3 doesn't even come close to that. I'm sure it could be done, but it would be slower than an asthmatic turtle. The guy running this company is a total twatwaffle.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
First, you're wrong.
About what? (I'm assuming that you're stating I'm wrong about something other than what you mention below, otherwise there would be no need to break it down into "first" and "second".)
Second, the proper terminology is neither "property" nor "possession" -- it's "to exercise unlawful domain."
Ok, I'll bite. Please explain why stealing a toaster can not be accurately characterized as unlawfully taking possession of the toaster. (I'm assuming you and I agree that stealing a toaster does not make the toaster the property of the thief, which is the assertion that I was objecting to in that paragraph.)
Damn facts always get in the way of a great analogy!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Plagiarism is wrong.
Plagiarism is wrong.
Plagiarism is wrong.
Plagiarism for profit may well be criminal fraud. REGARDLESS of any copyright infringement, IP "theft", or failure to comply with the terms of a software licence, PLAGIARISM IS WRONG.
If you didn't do the work, don't claim you did.
Asshat.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Not by a long shot. There have been a large number of discovered violations, most of which have been settled without a legal battle.
Most of the recent ones have involved the iptables/netfilter code. Among the companies who have settled after being cited for violations are Gigabyte, Siemens, Fujitsu-Siemens, Asus, and Belkin.
Another fairly recent one was the folks behind MPlayer discover KiSS Technology were using both their code and several other GPL products in their video players.
But in any case there must be a file called "LICENCE" in the program folder (or somewhere revelant according to your OS). And the file is missing.
:)
So basically he's forking a GPL software and switchs to a non-free licence : that's wrong. If he effectively put the program under GPL (which doesn't seem to be the case anyway) I'll be totally OK with the fork and the selling of the software.
I didn't indend to "rip on" you anyhow so I'm sorry if I was a bit rude. And I think I have understood the GPL quite well actually, thank you
They're looking for someone experience in PEARL
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
And the part I'm wondering about is. lets say I pay the $50 they're asking and request the source code, which they send to me. Based on the GPL am I not allowed to then compile my own version, call it PearryOS and give it away, undermining their "business"?
(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!)
Just like any other license (other than release into public domain), the GPL has conditions on it. If you follow those limitations, it's OK to use GPLd code. If you don't, it's not.
What's so difficult about this?
Whadaya mean, "the /. position"? There is no one /. position.
The sane position, though, is this:
CherryOS isn't stolen code, because copyright infringement and theft are two different things. It does, however, contain code which is illegally distributed without a license (since the auther fails to accept and follow the terms of the GPL), hence its authors are evil bastards.
Like the other guy said, you need a PowerPC machine already in order to use MOL. Basically, you need a Mac, running Linux, in order for you to run MacOS on MacOnLinux.
PearPC runs on x86 hardware, enabling you to run MacOS on an Intel or AMD machine. And it's way slower! Terribly slow. But it's actually usable if you have a very fast machine, networking works, and sound is on the way. It's not production quality but it's real cool.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
No, you're missing the point. Perhaps because you philosophically wish to call copyright violation theft because it offends your notion of right or wrong (it does mine as well, in most cases), or perhaps because the people you're responding to haven't clarified the issue enough.
... the copyright holder remains the copyright holder.
... unless one has a specific, political ax to grind in obfuscating the terminology.
... except theoretical income they might have made
Perhaps, but I don't think I'm missing the point. Or, at least, we're concerning ourselves with different points. Original poster claimes, rightly so, that you can't claim that copyright violation isn't theft when it comes to music, but it is theft when it comes to software, even if you re-brand it and pass it off as your own. I'm not saying the two are equally bad, and I'm not suggesting that copyright infringement deserves the label "theft". I'm simply refuting the fallacious argument put forth by the person I originally responded to (who responded to original poster), in which he argued that the software case, in the case of CherryOS, was more similar to removing physical posession from someone else (which he wrongly describes as 'taking ownership') than it is to copyright infringement.
Copyright violation is not theft
This is a ridulous argument. It's like saying that hot-wiring a car and driving off with it is not theft because the Title documents are still in the original owner's name. The fact that the legal Title owner remains so, is the reason why it *is* theft. Similarly, the fact that the copyright holder remains the copyright holder is the reason why copyright violation *is* theft. But anyway, whether or not copyright violation constitutes theft is not the subject of my post. This is an issue upon which reasonable people can disagree. My point is that people who argue that "copyright infringement is not theft because it doesn't involve the removal of tangible property from someone else's possession" are hypocritical if they claim that the CherryOS situation is theft, despite the lack of any removal of tangible property from the possession of the PearOS folks.
Stealing credit is, well, theft.
Personally, I agree with you, but that's because I don't restrict my definition of "theft" to the removal of someone else's physical possession of a tangible object by illegal means. I consider it hypocritical to assert that stealing credit is theft, but stealing source code is not theft. Neither credit nor source code is a physical tangible object. I respect the opinion that both are theft. I respect the opinion that neither is theft. I object only to the inconsistent labeling of one as theft and the other not.
The one is not theft, the other is. It really is that simple
I disagree on all three counts: (1) that one form of misusing someone's intellectual property is 'theft' while the other is not, (2) that it really is 'that simple', and (3) the anyone who disagrees with your inconsistent labelling must fall on a particular side of the political "copyright infringement is theft" debate.
The original creator loses credit
How so? The original creator can still claim credit. Just because one person "claims" something doesn't mean the other person "loses" it.
and has their rightful acclaim usurped, along with whatever legal rights to their work they might have had
Really? I've never heard of a plagiarism victim or copyright violation victim losing their legal rights to the work.
Replicating something without the creator's permission is not theft or stealing in any non-doublespeak sense of the word
If you claim that "credit" is something tangible that you can "own" and have "property rights" over, but that your "music" or "source code" is not, then you are the one committing doublespeak.
The creator loses nothing
And you consider this LESS deserving of the word theft than "taking credit" is? I consider the opposite to be true.
" as long as I am not making copies and giving/selling them to others." that IS 100% what "cherryos" is doing. they are selling pearpc without the copyright holders permission.
your argument ["Here, piracy is NOT theft..."] is based on fallacious reasoning. piracy and copyright infringement are not the same thing. just because you want to call copyright infringement piracy does not make it so, as i pointed out in my previous post.
the *aa orgs are suing based on their own very narrow, self-serving, and often incorrect interpretaions of existing [and imaginary] law. they would gladly like you to believe that fair use does not exist. they bend statistics to create a false picture of loss. they misdirect the fact that any real financial losses occur from commercial infringement and piracy in eastern europe and asia. we won't get into the fact that they have been convicted of price-fixing...
in some countries, some forms of p2p file shariing may be a copyright infringement. in others the same thing may be perfectly legal [eg canada]. however, non-commercial p2p file sharing is most definitely not theft, nor is it piracy.
cherryos is a clear violation of several sections of the gpl. as such, it is in violation and the the distributors lose all rights to the code under existing copyright law.
to argue the similarity of a commercial vendor attempting to hijack another group's code with people sharing music with each other is disingenuous at best.
from this point forward you will be arguing with yourself.
sum.zero
Of course, but the GPL does not RESTRICT you from doing this.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Like - it doesn't have good documentation, and after inserting disk 2 of OSX, it won't see the disk, and there's no way to mount/unmount it.
Maybe I'm just too used to VMWare.
Maybe the only realy vision for these guys is to get bought by VMWare...
[sig] 10 + 10 = 100 [/sig]
would someone POP this cherry already???
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Yes.
(Yeah, I'm sure someone will say you can make money with GPL code but let's be realistic... any of your customers can release the code for free if they like.)
Random is the New Order.
Tinfoil hat time!
If IBM was smart....
They'd avoid what appears to be a deliberate attempt to test the GPL in court. As ackbar would say, IT'S A TRAP. I think at this point it's just a matter of finding the microsoft link to CherryOS.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
If you want to try it without registering on this copyright infringer's website, here's the direct link: http://movies.mxsinc.com/CherryOS_Software.zip
Nobody in the tech world seems to grasp that defending your legal rights costs money. Every time Slashdot does a story about another round of Cease and Desist letters, we get a ton of posts saying, in effect, "That's obviously lame, people should just ignore them." But the sad fact is, you don't know how lame any legal action is until you've gotten legal advice. Nor can you take legal action without that overpaid guy in the suit.
Well, if you're very smart and very patient, you can represent yourself in Small Claims Court. But that's not applicable to this kind of issue.
The GPL restricts them from doing it unless they release the source code, make it available via mail, and some other stuffs.
Is CherryOS finally open sourced? If so, it might not be a violation. Of course, there might be a part about acknowledging the original creators, I'm mixing my opensource licenses so I can't remember.
im curious about the naming of the two programs; to me naming your ppc emulator cherryos and "releasing" it a short time after a free ppc emulator called pearpc was released is suspicious at least. it doesnt make them theives, but it definitely makes them unoriginal.
lose != loose
except they took credit for something they probably didnt do. I imagine if they had just said they were making a comercial product based on pearpc there wouldnt have been so much trouble.
lose != loose
Did I say something about court?
the /. link finally gets you nowhere, the 'authors' site pushes CheryOs as a learning tool, not a replacement. and requires the usual data harvest before possible download, yawn, maybe next year.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
"If Apple would lower their prices, they'd sell a lot more macs and get more marketshare."
;)
;)
I thought that's what Mac mini was meant to do: have a lower initial price tag. Although just so you know, I got this 4-year-old original TiBook I'm typing on at the moment for $250 for Christmas last year. For twice that price, I could have a Mac mini, but this here laptop runs sooo smoothly. Sure, it's not your dual G5, but I'm not playing Halo; I listen to/write music, code, work with graphics, etc., and it handles what I need it to do. In other words, I'm sure you realize that there are alternatives to brand new computers.
"one-button mouse"
As always, all you need to do is plug in a two-button mouse. I've been a Mac user my whole life (I must be young, eh?), but I found a nice $15 two-button + scroll wheel USB mouse, plugged it in, and used it. Not much more difficult than that. And if you buy a Mac mini, you won't feel like you're wasting that one-button mouse because it doesn't come with it.
"dancing title bar"
Huh? Do you mean the way the menu bar changes when you switch applications? Personally, I like that better than having to hunt down a new title bar every time I click a new differently-sized window. At least it remains constant within the same Mac application, and honestly I'm surprised that having it change might bother someone. I see it as analagous to the Windows taskbar... you click another window or open something, and the taskbar changes to reflect the current state.
The only thing I can think of that "dances" in the title bar of windows is the three close, minimize, and zoom button gems. If it's the color that bothers you, you can use the Graphite theme. If it's the fact that x, -, and + symbols appear when you move the mouse over them, I don't know how you can survive the toolbars in Windows.
"I don't really want to appreciate it. I just wanna test stuff on it."
You know, I think I understand completely. Virtual PC lets me test my own sites for IE6. I don't want to appreciate Windows (it's even more painful when emulated on my old Mac), I just use it so more people are happy when my site looks right and functions correctly.
I certainly don't believe that it's disgusting for Mac OS X to be running on x86, because hey, I use Windows on PowerPC. However, there's no way to appreciate either OS when they are being emulated. I know Windows can be usable, user-freindly(ish), and powerful when used on the hardware it was intended for, but it sure is none of these through Virtual PC. I imagine it would be the same for Mac OS X through CherryOS.
Im not sure if anyone mentioned this yet, but I noticed that CherryOS claims Altivec support, while PearPC does not.
Has anyone tested this yet? I would do it myself, but I don't have a copy of OSX.
I'm more curious to see if CherryOS is superior to PearPC then if it is a copy.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
They claim this is a G4 emulator. Pear PC emulates a G3 processor. Why dont you just do a simple comparison and write a file that checks to see if the additional improvments in the G4 processors are found in the emulator. If they are then Cherry cant be a blaintent copy because Pear PC revolved around G3 emulation. Find true G4 emulation, which would require quite a bit of a reworking of PearPC code along with a bunch of new code, and there you have the evidence that the core of the emulator wasnt copied.
However, it would be a fun easter-egg. Put something in that detects if the rest of the code has been ripped off (maybe sometthing that searches for CherryOS). If it exists, then after 1 week of use start playing annoying sounds (maybe symphonic flatuation) through the speakers and saying foul things in various languages.
:-)
That ought to get somebody's attention
And in Daniel Foesch's words:
I already said that (in the subject line of my message). Why do you ask me to repeat myself?
Arguably, this is considerably worse than your conventional personal-use copying inasmuch as it's done for purposes of financial gain. Whereas most presently ongoing software piracy would have been unactionable prior to redefinition of the relevant laws (to include receipt of other protected works as "gain"), this in particular would have been illegal even under the older regulations.
(I'm likewise inclined to argue that from a moral perspective, use of copyrighted material without a license is considerably more reprehensible when done with the expectation of financial gain).
Please. Are you suggesting that, this time, he actually did write a complete PowerPC emulator from scratch?
No. I'm suggesting that he may be complying with the terms of the GPL. Have you acquired a copy, and verified that the text of the GPL is not present and/or the source code is not available?
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.
The article is highly speculative. It presents no evidence to support its claims. You haven't provided any evidence that this violates the GPL. All that is required is that the cource and a copy of the licence is available. If you have adequate evidence the the contrary, then fair enough. I would point out that if you don't have evidence, claiming that he violates the GPL is borderline libel.
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.
I can't be bothered. It doesn't concern me. If the PearPC devloers care to prove that it is breaching the GPL, they have my full support.
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,
I think accuracy is important. "Theft" isd a loaded term. "Stolen" is a loaded term. "Copyright infringement" is an accurate term. The point is to avoid fallacious arguments. I agree theft is wrong. If copyright infringement is theft, then copyright infringement is wrong. I don't neccesarily agree that copyright infringement is theft or that it is inherently wrong. Calling it theft detracts from this point. I think that the morality of copyright infringement in itself is the important factor, and not whether it is analagous to theft.
'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.'
There is strong evidence to suggest he is using the PearPC codebase. In fact I'm fairly certain of this. However, I accept as fact that it is explicitely permitted to make derivitive works from PearPC and distribute them as long as certain conditions are met. There is very little evidence that these conditions have not been met. There is some evidence that the source code is supplied.
I would be willing to contribute money to some sort of legal defense fund for the makers of PearPC so that they could sue the ever-loving daylights out of these bastards... those of us who admire the concept of Open Source may have to be willing to stand up at times like this and defend it.
-Vendal Thornheart
Which is to say that it doesn't. At least not on my tyan dual opteron setup. Woof, Woof, Woof. Return of the bowser...
As a lawyer you should be aware of section 504(c) which offers the option of statutory damages that can be $150,000 per infringement if it is willful.
I thought you couldn't "steal" something if you were just making a copy of it?
Don't try to pretend like you've never heard a counter-argument to that. What's your point? Telling the world that you're in denial of the existance of people who can think P2P piracy is theft, and at the same time can also think plagiarism of GPL'ed code is theft? Plagiarism is stealing other people's work is theft, albeit a different kind from piracy. There's no mystery here. I'm not sure how you're trying to connect these two.
Yes, I read the article. It was a joke.
My bad ; )
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
I'm asking you a simple question that everybody should ask themselves. Why are you so special that we should listen to you over facts?
Why are you avoiding the question? Do you know the answer?
I don't have similar questions on other threads. This one was for you. You seem to enjoy analyzing things, but do you analyze yourself?
The creator loses nothing ... except theoretical income they might have made
And you consider this LESS deserving of the word theft than "taking credit" is? I consider the opposite to be true.
Absolutely. If you define the "loss of potential (i.e. hypothetical, perhaps never-would-have-existed, and by no means certain) income" as theft, then you define all aspects of competition, upon which our capitalist system depends to function, as "theft."
Steal a man's wallet and you've committed theft -- the guy you stole from is out one wallet, assorted credit and identity cards, and whatever cash/family pics/what-have-you he was carrying. Refuse to buy the man's product, either because someone gave made a knockoff copy and gave it to you for free, or because you simply don't want it, and you've stolen nothing. Nada. Nichts. If the product was copyrighted and you obtained a copy, you violated his right to restrict copying and distribution (copyright), but you still haven't STOLEN anything, regardless of whether or not he lost potential income as a result.
In short, denying someone income isn't theft. Taking something they already possess away from them is. Or put another way, the potential that something may be does not equal the reality that something is. This applies to potential vs. already obtained income, abortion vs. murder, birth control vs. murder, not-watching-commercials vs. theft, copyright violation vs. theft, patent violation vs. theft, and any host of other controversial topics where logic is muddled beneath rhetoric because of emotional feeling on one side or the other.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If you follow the GPL, others can re-distribute YOUR program which will limit the price you can charge without being undercut by others. Linux distributions are a good example for this:
Red hat is still in business.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"PEARPC IS LICENSED UNDER THE GPL. WITH ALL GPL'ED SOFTWARE, YOU MUST MENTION THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND INCLUDE THE SOURCE CODE. TURNING GPL'ED CODE INTO COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE IS NOT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. TURNING GPL'ED CODE INTO COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE WITHOUT GIVING CREDIT TO THE ORIGINAL AUTHORS OR INCLUDING A COPY OF THE SOURCE CODE IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT."
no kidding, thats what i said with "if they had just said they were making a comercial product based on pearpc there wouldnt have been so much trouble;" i may have only implied that they should have followed the GPL, but i thought that most
yes i realize im talking to a brick wall
lose != loose
That's right. LycheeOS here we come!
I agree with your entire post.
Note that I wasn't saying the poster was *correct* (there's a reason why nobody except SCO has been stupid enough to try to fight the GPL in court); I was just trying to guess where the idea came from. Of course, maybe you weren't trying to say that, either. :-)
If you define the "loss of potential (i.e. hypothetical, perhaps never-would-have-existed, and by no means certain) income" as theft, then you define all aspects of competition, upon which our capitalist system depends to function, as "theft."
Non sequitur. Loss of potential income can be the result of the other guy having a superior product, for example, or the result of corporate espionage by the other guy, for another example. I don't equate the two.
Steal a man's wallet and you've committed theft -- the guy you stole from is out one wallet, assorted credit and identity cards, and whatever cash/family pics/what-have-you he was carrying. Refuse to buy the man's product, either because someone gave made a knockoff copy and gave it to you for free, or because you simply don't want it, and you've stolen nothing. Nada. Nichts.
Sure, as long as the knockoff copy was made legally.
If the product was copyrighted and you obtained a copy, you violated his right to restrict copying and distribution (copyright), but you still haven't STOLEN anything, regardless of whether or not he lost potential income as a result.
I disagree. It's not capitalism if you have to resort to unfair competition. If you compete by breaking the law, it is, for all intents and purposes, theft.