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PearPC Trying to Sue CherryOS
Varg Vikernes writes "PearPC developers are taking in donations to sue Maui X-Stream, the developers of the MAC emulator software CherryOS. There have been allegations that CherryOS is nothing more than PearPC code, which is open-source, but with a GUI attached to it. One of the PearPC developers tried to get in contact with someone from Maui X-Stream, but eventually were told to "speak with an Attorney" about the allegations. "
I justed donated.
I'd like to see the GPL tested over this a bit more. It just adds one more opinion in future events.
That and this guy blatenly misuses GPL'd code repeatedly and then has the audacity to tell the world that he wrote it all.
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
Why does it need court cases?
Seems the only people who claim it's never been tested in court are its proponents. Most legal opinions, including that of the IBM, and Microsoft, seem quite convinced that the GPL is valid.
I'll consider donating if/when PearPC transfer the copyright to the FSF, and the FSF gets to handle the talks/litigation.
(I'm working on the assumption, based on where they are, that they haven't bothered)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
You give more and more power to companies to "defend their IP" and you end up having the little guy run over like this. When CherryOS originally came out it was booting verbatim like PearPC and now you have this. They stole the PearPC developers' code and now costly litigation will probably be necessary. On top of that, where is the liability for those who may have funded the company responsible here?
There was a case recently where a small American company got royally screwed over by Toshiba too. Toshiba took the technology that was being developed for flash memory and practically gave it to San Disk. Does the government itself go tooth and nail after the big company? Of course not because "we can't punish the entire company for a few men's actions..."
Since most of the innovation comes from small time companies and individuals, those are the ones that the government should be putting the most effort into protecting from theft of their hard work. That means better protection from big companies using IP to crush them so they can rape and pillage the innovations of the smaller companies.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I'm totally with the developer here, but look at this:
Notice, if you're paying attention, even if they comply with the GPL now, they're still in violation of my copyright.
He tries to revoke the license just for them retroactively. I don't think that is possible, is it?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Why should he give his code to another company, even if it is one you trust, to get fair representation? FSF may not deal with this, but another organization interested in preserving the "sanctity" of the GPL might without any demand for the copyright of the code.
There is a difrence between copying a song by *band* and letting your mate hear it
and letting your mate hear a song by *band*, trying to sell it to him whilst saying you made it
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
In this case, the people responsible for this are selling the product of another, not just using it for their own collection (which they would be all right with).
It would be a different situation if the RIAA were, for example, suing people who burn pirated music and sell it.
Do you post the same tired and fallacious argument in every damn article? Oh, you do. What the heck motivates you after all these years? The fleeting pseudo- social-contact of a response to your trolls? That's pretty sad.
(a) Slashdot is a discussion forum with thousands of members. People can and do think different things. The P2P and GPL people are not necessarily the same.
(b) Look, the FSF party line is "Without copyright the GPL would be unenforceable. It would also be unnecessary.". I'm happy for you to violate the terms of my GPL licensed code, PROVIDED you waive all right now and in future to enforce your own copyrights. Seems fair to me.
So Apple has a signed contract from all of the customers who bought OS X off the shelf in a retail outlet? Unless you can provide an example of existing precedent, EULAs are still non-binding.
The reason there are no clones is because Apple won't sell OS X in a form that can be easily installed in a production environment. It would be uneconomical for a clone maker to buy boxes of OS X to get the install CDs and license documents.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Big difference (not saying that either of them are right):
P2P downloaders don't make any money off of their downloads (usually).
CherryOS makes money off of their violation.
It wouldn't be like stealing music over P2P, it would be like stealing music over P2P, burning it to CDs and selling them with markup.
No, the problem is that I've never seen anyone here go to great lengths to rationalize and justify this type of copyright infringement. But when Slashbork posts the *AA-story-of-the-week you can browse at +5 and read the most mind-bending, self-serving "commentary" about why copyright is "evil", the *AA sucks, the artists are getting screwed and "we're sticking it to the man so fire up eMule and let's get it on". To claps and assenting nods from the peanut gallery. Time and time again.
Copyright is copyright. The GPL exists to counter the idea of copyright and gets its "teeth" as it were from it as well. If everyone is going to ask for blood when the GPL is violated somehow (by ignoring the force of the of the work's original creator copyright) then maybe everyone could also cry foul when someone tries to call infringement "fair use" because it happens to be music instead of source code.
/. roots for the underdog.
-If the GPL wins, everybody wins except the greedy corps. (unless they use\contribute to GPL software.)
-IF the xxAA wins, fat middlemen get a new mansion for exploiting artists.
Either way, it's greed vs. advancing human kind.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
How do the PearPC developers benefit from slaving away in their free time, only to watch someone else stealing their work and selling it for $100 a pop while not only not giving them any credit, but actually accusing them of lying for saying they wrote it in the first place?
It appears from your comment that you have never created anything of any value. If you have, then imagine how you would feel if someone did to that what Maui X-Stream are doing to PearPC. Happy? I doubt it.
In these circumstances, humans react in one of two ways. Either they attack, or they give up. They do not bend over and take it. And I would far, far rather that the PearPC developers wasted money on lawyers, than that they just threw their hands up and abandoned the project.
That's not the point. Whether or not they make money isn't the issue here.
Both cases are instances of violating intellectual property law. If you get angry over GPL violation but are okay with P2P violation, you are elevating one instance of the law over another, which is a double-standard.
I really don't see why this upsets people so much when it's pointed out. The law doesn't magically go away just because you're not physically making money when you violate it. If we're supposed to respect the intellectual property basis of the GPL, that has to apply everywhere, or else the GPL has no valid legal basis. We can't paint the GPL as some special situation just because we want to.
This is supposed to be a mature community; grow up! I don't care if you pirate. But don't complain about GPL violations on Slashdot while you check your background eMule downloads. It's self-serving and hypocritical. GPL violaters gain everything and return nothing based on the work of others. As do P2P copyright violaters. They're the same kinds of people who want to benefit from others without compensation of any kind.
think about it.
CherryOS is an attempt(allegedly) to make money off a gift given to society via GPL without giving credit where credit is due.
P2P mp3 downloaders are breaking the law, no doubt about that, but only when they download copyrighted works.
However, they are downloading something that is overpriced, and something for which they may have
a "right" to download. what if they own the cd? what if they own it, but they lost it or broke it? they paid for the right to listen to it.
First, whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it shouldn't personally bankrupt anyone, just the corporation, which is a legal entity constructed for just such a reason: to legally protect individual members.
Second, they are trying to sell this software, not just use it. The standards for compliance on GPL software are very, very easy to comply with, much more so than music or mp3s.
Actually real news organizations are supposed to follow the rules of reporting news and not forcing their judgments on its readership.
They are allegations until proven in a court of law as far as the new organizations should be concerned. Not following this could very well ruin a innocent person's life.
I, for one, welcome our allogation-expounding sroty-submitters!
allegations!? Bullshit! They ripped of code and there's no argument about it, so can we please stop debating this and nail them to a wall, thank you.
Surprisingly, the purpose of a lawsuit is to actually look at the evidence in a controlled manner and determine whether Maui X-Stream truly did rip off the PearPC code and break the PearPC license. As obvious as it may seem to us, following the legal forms is pretty dang important as well, as you might agree if you were being sued.
There's a difference between copying and plagiarism.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I hope you chickenfuckers /.'ing the site are actually donating, because you're preventing me from doing so.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
>But why should we have to pay for freedom?!
What an utterly stunning statement!
'Freedom' should, of course, be everyone's birthright and should not have to be paid for (except with blood, sweat, toil and tears)
Unfortunately, millions of people have died (and are still dying for) freedom.
You cheapen the word 'freedom' by applying it to such a totally trivial issue.
Get out more man!
"MAC", in all capitals, stands for Media Access Control, and is the hardware address of your Ethernet card.
"Mac" is short for "Macintosh", which is the computer made by Apple.
Call me a stickler but I believe there is just as good a reason for this convention to be enforced as there is for the difference between "KB","Kb","kb", and "kB" to be enforced. Reply if you really need me to elaborate further.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
If there were no copyright, then what CherryOS is doing to PearPC would be perfectly fine. Copyright exists in part to prevent just this sort of thing.
That's really what the GPL needs, confirming the anti GPL FUD from various sources. By giving away your copyrights to the FSF, the only way to protect your copyrighted GPL code.
Fair use does not allow you to pass others work off as your own.
The GPL grants you extra rights above fair use, such as modification of sourcecode, redistrobution of sourcecode, etc, as long as the source stays open.
They are breaking the terms of the GPL, (which allows fair use, by law).
Fair use has nothing to do with this. If i bought a song legitimately and tried to sell it to a record company as my own, that would be equivalent to the cherryos/pearpc scenario.
You're confused. Maybe you've been reading The Stallman Diaries too much.
If copyright didn't exist then the GPL (and pretty much any other use or distribution license) would be unenforceable. That is, the limitations imposed by the GPL in terms of distribution would not stand. So anyone could anything with your code. That "plenty of people" can give software away and still eat is because of copyright enforcement.
Hope that helps.
No, its a test of the GPL.
A common response to the GPL is, "You released the code, now we can use it."
The GPL is a statement that my open source is NOT avaliable for any purpose, but you must use it under specific situations/circumstances.
Not that I believe the GPL will fail, in court--It is a granting of extra rights.
Incidentally, your view is the correct one: This is a test of copyright infringement. Some people attempt to say that the GPL is actually a mis-assignment of rights, that licensing under the GPL is tantemount to giving your works into the public domain.
But this is not the case, and infact the GPL is the only possible justificaiton one can have for using GPL'd code.
Anything else is copyright infringement, and yes, copyright infringement is a well founded legal discpline.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
There is a fundamental difference, though it doesn't necessarily excuse our behavior :)
Works that are GPL'd start out free and open, and we strive to keep it that way.
Copyrighted works start out as proprietary and (sometimes) not free, and are vigorously defended.
Basically the Slashdot crowd's emotional response is not to the copyrighting involved but to the idea that "information wants to be free"... whatever that means.
-Robert
Actually, it is the point.
The reason people have different reactions to these same two violations of IP law is that the violators in one case are not making money, and the violators in the other case are.
While they are both breaking the same law, there's no reason that we have to feel the same about the lawbreaking. Just like we'd want to let off a person that steals bread to feed their family, but want to lock up the Enron executives. Both stole.
Why sould you distinguish between the two? Stealing is stealing. Since you make a distinction between the two, how do you define rich and poor? What if some poor soul has the same attitude, sees you as rich, and then steals from you?
Never ending copyrights are good only for the xxAA.
That is not advancing human kind. With laws like that Fair Use is dead.
GPL'd S/W makes it so that ANYONE can benefit.
I guess you think all P2P users would pay for all that stuff they DL'd.
Sometimes it's the only way to get some remixes or old stuff since RIAA and friends ignore that market.
Artists sign because they feel it's the only way to get $.
Granted it's not a perfect situation but the xxAAs don't want to change anything because they will loose what really matters to them: Control.
People are sick of being controlled, manipulated and ripped off. Yes, the labels will suffer and die but will musicians stop making music? 'Course not! True-artists don't need Labels, they just need an outlet and the Internet gives them that.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
No, and this is partly what is wrong with America today.
Lawsuits are not about profit. They are about redressing wrongs. If someone hoses you over, the law says that you are entitled to be restored to the state you would be in if you were not hosed.
Punitive damages go a step further and (as the name implies) punish the wrongdoer for hosing you over. I believe this is where many folks get confused and think that lawsuits are all about making money (other than for lawyers). If punitive damages were paid into the U.S. Treasury (or state equivalent), it would fix a lot of ambulance-chasing that goes on today (of course, actual damages are still payable to the plaintif - they go to redress the tort that brought the parties to court in the first place).
If there were no copyright then I could give away copies Cherry OS all day long.
Last time I checked CherryOS costs $99.99.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I don't thing Dave needs to do any karma whoring. I think he's more concerned about the degradation of the signal/noise ratio. By getting the good info out there first, one doesn't have to wade through nearly as much utter crap to be informed.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
"Without copyright, there would be virtually no creation. The only artists and creative people doing any work would be those sponsored by corporations who sell physical things, those who are independently wealthy, and those who have other means of supporting themselves. The only produced would be part time amateur works. The professional artist would fade away."
Nonsense. Copyright is a relatively new invention of mankind and creation has gone on for thousands of years.
evil is as evil does
Cherry OS pretty much sucks right now--it'll probably die on the vine anyway.
People buy things because of their belief they'll satisfy a want. There are plenty of people who want to run Mac OS X on their PC. They'll do a search for such a product, and come up with one "hit": CherryOS.
For every hundred people who find Maui-X's Web site this way -- and give them money based on the best information they have -- maybe one of them will also read Slashdot or some other forum where geeks say, "CherryOS sux0rs!"
Don't kid yourself: Geekdom is a laughably insignificant factor in how consumer technology decisions are made. Geek influence correlates to the geekiness of the product.
But the benefits CherryOS promises are NOT primarily geeky. Their tagline: "Experience Mac OS X on your PC". You don't need a CS degree to understand that.
Tom Geller
I'm not sure what your lawyer was smoking but you don't cure copyright infringment by committing it yourself. You just allow the other side to remove their damages from what you would have been awarded and opened yourself up to other counterclaims and nasty defenses like "unclean hands" which could result in you being unable to pursue the case.
It's much better to take the high road and get a good lawyer. Hopefully one will be willing to do it pro-bono or at least on contingency. Their donations should be able to cover court filing fees and document duplication costs (well, I hope). Maybe the FSF or the OSDN could assist them with the GPL aspects.
Please also consider donating to the RIAA to see their intellectual property protected.
The RIAA seems to be doing just fine protecting their intellectual property without need of donations.
Many p2p file sharers blatantly misuse copyrighted music repeatedly and then have the audacity to share those mp3 files with the world.
The RIAA sues individual infringers, just as PearPC may sue CherryOS.
Remember, kids: it's copyright law which allows the enforcement of the GPL. It's copyright law which allows the RIAA to enforce its rights. You can't have one without the other.
There is one thing you can have without the other. It is possible to have copyrights, and licensing without having evil price fixing cartels that conspire to keep artists poor, while using their obscene profits to lobby for infinite term copyright laws, criminalizing software tools, DMCA, DRM, etc.
I think the moral, ethical and financial (as far as donations) differences between the RIAA and PearPC are night and day different.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Do F/OSS developers really want to set a precedent for stooping to the level of copyright infringers? It's much better for the image of PearPC and open source development in general if we get a lawyer to fight the clear-cut cases for us. The GPL and a lawyer should do the work here, not trickery and underhandedness.
If everyone who was Karma whoring took the time to write intelligent, helpful posts with useful links, I think we'd have to change the definition of Karma whoring.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The reason most people don't feel guilty about "stealing" music is that they have been ripped off by the music industry and consider it getting back at them.
You want to get back at them? You want to REALLY get back at the RIAA? I have a secret I'll share with you, DON'T FUCKING LISTENT TO RIAA MUSIC!!
There, was that hard? As much as all these people like to complain that the RIAA is stealing off the artists, guess what, the artists they are so ardently defending VOLUNTARILY entered into a contract with the RIAA. So I don't know how they are defending an artist who doesn't want/need defended.
Monstar L
Um... Is that ANY USE AT ALL?
They compared source similarity by analyzing the binary? Do they even use the same compiler (or compiler options, debug settings, etc.)?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Of course; my situtation is different but the same "evasive tactics" apply. They're trying to hide behind a "fear" of the judicial system most people seem to have. Honestly I don't care much about the cash as I do drilling home for this imbecile that he just shouldn't bounce checks.
I'm just saying these people sometimes seem to just be begging for it.
Read my stuff.
Quite apart from the question of exactly what counts as dependency (difficult), they are pretending the code is their own. This means they have been distributing GPL stuff in binary only form without attaching a copy of the license. This alone is enough to revoke their GPL licence.
Indeed it would be easier to corner them in court on these grounds, which are clearcut. If I were a lawyer arguing this case I'd want to stay right away from the whole issue of dependency, because it is unclear.