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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.
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."
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.
However, you do need to include the relevant copyright notices in the source.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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.
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.
Note that there is no requirement to credit the original authors, which some people seem to believe.
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.
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.
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.
"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"
PearPC is slower than a calculator rendering doom 3 and MOL only works on PowerPC.
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
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.
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!
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.
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
Wikileaks, no DNS
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.
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
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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
Parent is obviously not Flamebait , And i will take the karma hit for being offtopic here ,
All he is stating is the fact that apple didnt rip off xerox and that the grandparent is obviously a bad troll
if you want to read about the Xerox GUI and the money apple paid to study it and improvments that were made by apple enginers to the design then a quick google search on the topic will help enlighten
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
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
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.
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
" 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
And in Daniel Foesch's words: