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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. "
It might be worthwhile mentioning that CherryOS (PearPC) is not a "MAC" (sic) emulator, but rather a general PowerPC architecture and motherboard emulator. PearPC presents itself as such. However, CherryOS markets and specifically targets itself at Mac OS X. Unfortunately, Apple's Mac OS X license agreement specifically states it can only be installed on an Apple-branded computer. Aside from the PearPC issues, CherryOS is a commercial product actively encouraging its users to break Apple's Mac OS X license agreement. And yes, this license agreement is binding: that's why no one makes clones. (And no, Apple "ROMs" are no longer required. Haven't been for ages.)
Funnily enough, Maui X-Stream president Jim Kartes said:
We are building an emulator like they are that uses Mac language. PearPC uses Mac language and next thing you know, they say we are using their code. This is a totally different architecture.
This comment makes no sense. "PearPC uses Mac language" has no meaning, and is, if anything, indicative of the fact that this company does not fundamentally understand the operation of innards of their product, which isn't surprising, since they didn't create it. PearPC is essentially a PowerPC motherboard emulator, which emulates a PowerPC processor, and various necessary elements of a PowerPC motherboard. I think what Kartes is trying to claim is that because PearPC and CherryOS do the same thing, it's no surprise that they'd appear similar. This claim is absurd, because the evidence is overwhelming that CherryOS is using PearPC as the emulation engine. CherryOS is essentially a graphical wrapper for PearPC, which does nothing more than pass instructions to PearPC and execute PearPC within itself. It tries to conceal, rather poorly, that PearPC is what's running underneath. Aside from the proof of very unique shared strings and symbols above, CherryOS also shares PearPC's featureset, or lack thereof in the case of support for sound and networking, and even PearPC's specific bugs. In sum, any claim that CherryOS and PearPC would share unique strings, variable names, and symbols simply because they're both emulators is ridiculous. Also, saying "Mac language" is really irrelevant because, aside from not making sense, PearPC (and CherryOS) doesn't have anything to do with the Mac or "Mac language". It's a *PowerPC* emulator. The fact that a Mac operating system runs on it is incidental; PearPC (and CherryOS) doesn't contain or use anything that could be referred to as "Mac language".
eWeek has a general overview of the situation:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1775386,00.as p
Below is a comprehensive collection of evidence, which runs the gamut from CherryOS including original PearPC graphics, extremely unique strings and error messages, debug code from PearPC, the same unique MAC address as PearPC's default network adapter (of which there are approximately 184884258895036416 different combinations), shared specific functionality, including bugs, and so on, not to mention code from other GPL projects:
http://www.ht-technology.com/cherryos-pearpc/cherr yos-pearpc.html
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0501.html
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0503.html
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0504.html
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0507.html
As a GPL developer I understand that the GPL needs court cases to maintain validity. So I donated $15. Please consider doing the same.
Obligatory corny fruit joke:
There's not a valid suit there...it's like comparing apples to oranges!
Badum-chh!
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
yeah, this is gonna be a test of the GPL. EFF, step forward. epic battle of intellectual property the way we define it, against the way they define it. americans, put away your guns.
coders, continue prepping releases. the point of open source is that things never get stale. if cherryOS is a ripoff today, ain't nothin' stoppin' PearOS from doing another point release in upgrade, and surfing their stupid PR blunder into fame...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
That annoys me so much I could strangle a manatee in the nude.
Do not touch -Willie
Lets just hope that SCO dosent "accept donations" also to sue who ever. on a serious note how did cherryOS think that they were going to get away with copying pearpc almost for vabtum?
Because, that would be different.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
the Apple.
keanmarine.com
that's one disfunctional fruit salad...
Rise up in the cafeteria and STAB them with your plastic forks!
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!
Time and Time again The pearPC team has shown evidence of the inclusion of their GPL licensed code in the code of CherryOS , What has CherryOS done,,Well they have stuck two middle fingers up and said "prove it" . . . .
The reason we use the GPL for our(as in gpl users, im not on the pearpc team) code is that we strongly belive in the principles of copyleft , keeping the code free
I can't 100% say that the PearPC team are right on this , though all the evidence i have seen has supported my belife that they are.
The GPL needs legal victorys , and it needs the defense of its spirit to remain valid
I shall donate my 10 as soon as i can as i understand how agrevating it can be to have others claim your hard work as their own
Please no trolls about how the GPL allows this , The gpl allows comerical software based on the license however it makes dammed sure that you release the changes and keep the code free
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
PearPc shouldnt do anything, That company will just suffer from a quick death, hell who would buy their product? After they realize how slow it is, they will probably ask for their money back.
Would you want to continue to improve/develop your project if you know someone out there is ripping off your hard work AND making a profit while you are left in the dust suffering?? I believe this is something amazing, and the actions of CherryOS will just inevitable cease development of PearOS if something doesn't happen.
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
My point was, I doubt they are turning a profit, NO ONE IS BUYING it!
keanmarine.com
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
...take a look at this. [In Internet time it's kinda old, March 16.]
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.
I'll remember this next time I download an n'sync song and retitle it under my own name for redistribution. Nobody will suspect a thing, and I'll get all the chicks!
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
The Apple, tastes much better and helps prevent viruses.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Unauthorized distribution (such as sharing on a P2P network) is included under copyright laws.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
This comes up everytime and you are painting with a very broad brush, but: Suing a company who has infringed your copyright and is using your work to make money: Good Suing your fans and potential customers, people who may be checking out which music to buy, and in any case are not making money off it: Within your legal rights but very stupid and shortsighted.
...will someone please post TFA?
Now I understand your username, TrollBridge.
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.
Yes it is , However fair use in my country , and the country i live allows me to give a copy to a mate , hwoever i would not distribute it over the net that is wrong but its another issue compared to profiting off of it and claiming you did it.
As an artist i do not mind if someone copys my work for a few freinds , yes mass distribution on the net is a bit irritating but its a small thing . However if they claim it as their own work i would get rather peeved as I put alot of hours into my creations .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Honestly, even if they are just slapping an interface on PearPC and selling it, isn't that legal?
I mean, aren't they really just charging for their GUI and packaging PearPC with it?
Isn't that within the restrictions of the GPL?
Where's PacMan when you need him?
I'm not a "troll." That term is thrown around way to much toward people around here.
P2P copyright infringement is a violation of intellectual property. GPL violation is a violation of intellectual property.
I've seen plenty of replies to my posts, but never a satisfactory explanation of the double-standard. If P2P copyright infringement is okay for most of you guys, then why should I follow a plain-text GPL file telling me what to do? Let's break the law together.
It's hypocrisy to not only get pissed over GPL copyright violaters, but then try to sue them. It's hypocrisy because P2P copyright violation is shrugged off, and suing individual downloaders (which is the very thing Slashdot was calling for in 2000 during the Napster lawsuit--I love that people have forgotten this...all those +5 comments that are now meaningless, I guess) is somehow really bad and evil.
People have painted the RIAA as "evil" for so long that they just regurgitate it over and over without even having any specific accusations to level against them. Artists willingly sign their contracts. There isn't some evil corporate world you're fighting against when you pirate music. You're just taking stuff so you don't have to pay for it. It's basic human nature.
So, why should I follow the GPL? What legal basis does it have? I'll tell you. Intellectual property and copyright law.
You can't respect intellectual property in one instance and not in another. That makes you a hypocrite.
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
Which works fine if you're a person making a living through creativity. Having to give up claim to their own work in order to claim someone else's is a viable disincentive. But the great unwashed masses have nothing to lose (as they make pet, unpaid-for copies of films and recordings, etc), because even as they knowingly infringe, they'd know they'll never produce anything copyrightable in their lives. Not going to work for the I-don't-want-to-pay-for-my-entertainment crowd.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
GPL software developer suing blatant copyright infringer - GOOD
Music industry suing blatant copyright infringer - BAD
Please note the fundamental difference where one is a non-profit suing a company infringing their copyright for the purposes of making money, while the other is a major corporation suing an individual who's motives were not monetary in nature (I don't consider stealing music they can't convert into money to be monetary).
I stole this Sig
And remember too that CherryOS is making money and 99% music sharers not. That is enough difference to make the second legal in my country.
So, it would be okay for me to steal a Mercedes as long as I give it away afterwards?
PearPC has been a very big deal to me for a long time. What Arben and MauiX are doing is wrong. Funny thing is they had a chance to step to the plate. A commercial app based off PearPC was never out of the question. They just chose to go about it the wrong way. The community backing PearPC would have (most anyway) supported someone packaging a commercial app derived from PearPC as long as they followed the GPL it was released under. Instead this company has chosen to lie and attempt to hide the facts. It's a fight they can't win, but they are for whatever reason determined to do so.
So if you are a PearPC supporter... I would suggest lending any help you can...
and if not... then as a supporter of the GPL any help you can is needed as well.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
So, basically, the less money you have, the less the law applies to you?
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.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
/. 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.
i dont really know why i feel so strongl yabout this situation i have followed it i just feel somethings so rotten here i am obliged to help. i have no use for pear pc but we all have a use of the gpl and protecting it. tried donating the link is down i will eventually get my donation in and i beg anyone who cares to do the same.
I Predict A Riot
As my father says, "There is an ass for every seat." Someone will buy it, unfortunately.
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
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.
I installed OSX on my machine... which is not an Apple branded Macintosh. It is a CoreComputing (no longer in business, not even a website anymore) machine with a GigaDesigns G4 Processor and after-market ATI RADEON 9500.
I think the only pieces of Apple hardware in the standard ATX case are the PSU and the logic board. Oh well.
When I get the $ together to get a G5, I'll turn this machine into a server, I guess. mmmm gentoo.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
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.
That is a distinction that is completely lost on (C) law.
The fact that you are denying someone else money is the same thing as far as (C) is concerned.
They are BOTH wrong.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Who decides what is greed and what is advancing human kind? Slashdot, whom you admit roots for one side over the other?
Why aren't P2P pirates greedy as well? They're the ones getting a ton of stuff without paying for it. Or are corporations the only ones who can be greedy?
Demonizing the RIAA with more vague accusations doesn't advance your position. Artists willingly sign their contracts with record labels.
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.
"Trying" to sue?
Sue, or sue not. There is no try.
Sorry, you're wrong.
Grokster and it's co-defendant are not violating any copyrighted code. Don't oversimplify things. If you are not capable of understanding the details of that case then just shut up about it.
In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Vin Diesel could use to kill you, including the room itself.
I see nothing there that is repeated in my post, and additionally, I included that URL in my post as "previous slashdot coverage".
But thanks for your concern.
I'm all for breaking into the homes and bank accounts of people who sell music others make and are trying to sell. Do whatever you like.
But when creative content has no benefit to the original creator beyond usability, this is pathetically wrong.
If the music industry wasn't so messed over, I would think P2P sharing was a good thing.
My little site.
P2P downloaders don't make any money off of their downloads (usually).
You know it just dawned on me that it's even more different than that statement suggests. Not only are P2P file-sharers not getting paid, they are paying their own/parent's money [in the form of equipment, time, bandwidth and electricity] in order to distribute the product of the RIAA. So in a twisted sense, they are doing the the musicians a favor. The whole reason bands sign obscene contracts with the RIAA is to get their music distributed. They know they aren't going to make much money off the CD sales, it'll come from concerts and merchandise.
While in the current legal framework I agree that downloading copywrited music against the wishes of the musicians is illegal, I think they need to realize that in a way we are doing them a favor. This is why the RIAA is so scared of P2P. They know it has the potential to take them out of the loop without significantly hurting the musicians.
Anyway, that's just something that popped into my head. I know that similar opinions have been voiced, but I've never seen it put that way.
Ender-
Nothing to see here
I choose GPL because I don't believe in copyright, if everyone used the GPL then there would be no copyright, and an electronic copy wouldn't have any value in it's self.
I choose independent music because the money goes to the bands, to pay their rent and get them pissed at the week ends, the money does not go to some anonymous company, to buy their directors champagne and caviar and make stock holders rich, years after their employees have died.
If their were no copyright or ownership laws we would not need the GPL.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Sue individual GPL infringers. Yay! Sue individual P2P downloaders. Boo!
Your logic assumes that the law is ethical as it now stands and that all copyright infringement is the same. Neither is true. Copyright law is broken, unfair, detrimental to our society in its current form, and unethical. The GPL is an attempt to "hack" copyright law using purely legal means, to allow copyright holders to make copyright work in the manner that it should. Basically it is enforcing a fair and ethical subset of copyright while removing all of the unfair restrictions. Both the GPL and the RIAA's copyrights are legal. Only one is ethical or good for society.
Since the GUI can't run without the backend, you can't say they are independants programs.
So the GPL applies.
There's a difference between copying and plagiarism.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
What, do you work for CherryOS? Expecting PearPC to provide you with a debugger, too?
Sorry, I apologize for being quite so snide, but really, its their (PearPC's developers) baby, so they can do as they like with it. If they license it under the GPL, they can pursue people who do not follow their license agreements.
If the GPL is not properly defended, it encourages infringement.
Yes, CherryOS will not succeed by itself. But imagine a company takes Linux, makes modifications, releases it as their own, and becomes a massive success.
I'm comparing Apples to Oranges, but it is most definitely the principle of thing.
I'm probably feeding a troll....
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Makeing money or not is irrelevent here. Copyright law covers use and distribution, and in both cases, downloading music and the rebranding of PearPC, the distribution that is occuring is outside the granted rights of the original consumer. The only difference selling it would make might be in the size of the penalty. There is actually nothing in the GPL that says that the company 'producing' CherryOS couldn't fork the code and sell it, but it does explicitly state exatly how you can go about it. They are not so they are not granted rights under the GPL, which now falls back to any rights granted by simple copyright law which states you can't do that without permission. They are illegaly distributing PearPC code the same way that P2P users sharing music are illegaly distributing copyrighted music.
BTW yes I do download music, but I pay a royalty on blank media for the ability to do so.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
If MXSinc gets Slashdotted - they will go broke due to bandwidth overages.
I hope you wouldn't mind then that CherryOS is utilizing their one "fair use copy" of PearPC, mmm?
How about Message Authentication Code ?
I hope you chickenfuckers /.'ing the site are actually donating, because you're preventing me from doing so.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
Don't sue them wait till they make money THEN SUE THEM!
:P Percentage or returns based on percentage of lawyer fees, and tell that guy to GO FOR THE THROAT!
Since it's a blatant copy you should be able to get 100% of profits and force them to take it off the market.
Though Evil I don't understand why they should be taking donations from nice stupid people, rather than taking the money from people who buy open source software, questionably nice stupid people.
I mean aren't lawsuits supposed to MAKE MONEY?
Let people invest in the lawsuit
One thing threatening Open Source today--piracy.
As we have already seen, the GPL is under attack from evil forces known as "pirates." These shadowy folk silently steal source code and violate the GPL, infringing on the rights of GPL authors. They are nothing more than thieves getting a free ride off the work of others, and I for one am disgusted at the idea of it. As you can see in the previous article, clearly Slashdot is also sickened by the idea of copyright infringement and piracy.
Some have even called for a lawsuit against these pirate thieves. Suing individual infringers has always been a position that Slashdot and its readership has supported, so it's only fair that the original GPL authors protect their rights and safeguard their material from being stolen in the future. I think we should all support any lawsuits against these infringers to protect the rights of GPL authors everywhere.
I appluad Slashdot and its readers for always taking a proactive stance against piracy and copyright infringement in general, and I would like to join the cause against this "source code theft." Piracy is a major threat facing OSS today.
>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!
That's right, you get modded down for being correct. Don't worry, years from now people would've used 'MAC' so many times that when you correct someone they'll tell you that because of popular usage MAC has now become correct.
One thing threatening Open Source today--piracy.
As we have already seen, the GPL is under attack from evil forces known as "pirates." These shadowy folk silently steal source code and violate the GPL, infringing on the rights of GPL authors. They are nothing more than thieves getting a free ride off the work of others, and I for one am disgusted at the idea of it. As you can see in the previous article, clearly Slashdot is also sickened by the idea of copyright infringement and piracy.
Some have even called for a lawsuit against these pirate thieves. Suing individual infringers has always been a position that Slashdot and its readership has supported, so it's only fair that the original GPL authors protect their rights and safeguard their material from being stolen in the future. I think we should all support any lawsuits against these infringers to protect the rights of GPL authors everywhere.
I appluad Slashdot and its readers for always taking a proactive stance against piracy and copyright infringement in general, and I would like to join the cause against this "source code theft." Piracy is a major threat facing OSS today.
"Sue individual GPL infringers. Yay! Sue individual P2P downloaders. Boo!"
Except for some "minor" differences.
1) Infringe GPL
2) Market said code in commercial product
3) Profit!
*Optional steps include lying poorly about stealing code.
Vs.
1) Download music and movies
2) Watch said movies and music
3) Suffer irrepairable brain damage from said
shitty ass mass media garbage.
*Optional steps include subjecting friends and family to the crap you've downloaded.
See the difference?
Thought so.
Stealing music and selling it?
Do you remember all those +5 comments saying "Thank God that AllOfMp3.com is standing up to the evil RIAA? What a great service?"
Yeah, me too.
the GPL will win thats the most important thing here.
I Predict A Riot
... Pear sues Cherry over Apple emulation. Film at Eleven.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
"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?
It's quite simple. People like to dump on the no-good-shits of the world. They like them clearly delineated and then they like to dump on them.
This allows them to feel better because they are part of a group, and clearly better than the target.
The RIAA with their sue-grandma stories sure look like they're really a bunch of jerks. So people dump on them. These people who appropriated a bunch of work that wasn't theirs are obviously a bunch of greedy bastards, so we dump on them too!
It's really not about the relative worth of the PearPC folks or the RIAA targets, but the clear-cut moral inadequacy of the party we get to therefore despise.
-josh
Yes, because you know for a fact that the same people who defend downloading the latest Madonna MP3 are the same ones up in arms over this.
The slashdot community is so small and uniform that there couldn't possibly be any people who the GPL should be upheld, yet admit MP3 trading is illegal if the song wasn't released under a P2P friendly license by the artists.
Everyone knows that the opinion that gets the most posts in a given story is the option of all slashdot readers. It's not like the people who feel strongly about the GPL issue are reading and posting in the GPL related stories and the P2P zealots are reading and posting in the P2P related stories.
Everyone reads and posts in all the stories, so everyone on slashdot must be and advocate of P2P yet want the GLP enforced by capital punishment.
I'm so damn close to getting a free ipod, which I'll fill entierly with CC licensed podcasts and rips of CDS I own.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Good insightful post! I'd like to sadly add that slashdotters aren't the only ones of guilty of this, but people in general all have one standard that affect themselves and another for others. Much like the the term troll, the term hypocrite is overly used.
If it was closed source, they could have twiddled the code and chanted "Pear isn't done until Cherry won't run!" (They could probably still do that even with OSS. Maui X-Stream doesn't seem too technical and might miss #ifdef tags in the code.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The money-making issue is a red herring. It's irrelevant.
That is your opinion. If somebody judges it to be relevant, then there is no hypocrisy in judging the two actions differently.
Mandatory Access Control?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
We got similar advise once. One of our supposed 'distribution partners' tried to license a product of ours, under their own name.
They walked away from the deal, started selling a different product under that name, but claimed our performance numbers (this was a fire supression chemical), and even quoted our test results, for a totally dissimilar product!
One of our legal staff advised us, "It's going to be a terrible pain to sue them. Rather, continue selling your products, use the same marketing literature, and 'copy-cat' them right back. Force them to sue you, if they dare."
The PearPC community should do this to CherryOS. Create a gui, that matches CherryOS exactly.
Release it as CherryOS Plus. Even use the same name. If they have the balls to take you to court, lots of interesting things will have to be revealed in discovery.
It'll cost you the same amount in lawyer fees, but it'll cost them much more. (Easier to defend, especially in a GPL question, where discovery will reveal the code).
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
'Viva la revolucion komandante!'
Your words, not mine.
'True, but then you wouldn't be able to eat if you happened to be an artist, musician or software developer.'
Funny, because there are plenty of people who give their software away for free, but can afford to eat. After all if their were no copyright things would be a lot cheaper.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Since you *still* don't seem to get the point (and still reply with the same old thing you've already said a hundred times before), let me reiterate:
You are so disingenuous it isn't even funny. Every time you trot out this chimera it makes you look like and confirms you as the idiot you are.
The point that you and your ilk miss is that if there were no IP laws then the GPL is NO LONGER NECESSARY. Let me emphasize that point: THE GPL IS ONLY NECESSARY IN THE CURRENT CLIMATE OF COPYRIGHT LAW THAT WE HAVE NOW.
Also, since you seem to be mentally challenged when it comes to this concept, let me also emphasize: PEOPLE WHO WANT THE GPL TO BE RESPECTED GENERALLY RESPECT COPYRIGHT LAW. That's right--there is no hypocrisy, other than in the straw man that you continually trot out to "prove" your nonsensical point.
Oh, and by the way, if you hate the GPL so much, just realize this--if you don't like the GPL, you don't have to accept it and then YOU ARE BOUND BY REGULAR COPYRIGHT LAWS. That's right: THE GPL GIVES YOU MORE RIGHTS THAN YOU HAVE UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW. Don't like it? Don't use it.
I'm sure I don't know what I'm talking about not being an attorney and all but it seems to me this is not a test of the GPL but a test of Copyright infringement. It would have been a test if CherryOS had lived up to the GPL providing the source code and then the developers of PearPC had renigged on the GPL suing CherryOS for copyright infringement. But what do I know?
History is so yesterday!
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.
;) yes only problem is that they are atempting to profit from it , as i mentioned
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I'm certainly not an expert on GPL law, but I've always read this another way. Please let me know how wrong or right I am, 'cause I could just be reading it wrong (not a lawyer ;-)
I thought basically if you take GPL'ed code and make any changes to it your new version must be licensed under the GPL as well. However, having an application dependant on GPL'ed code doesn't mean you have to GPL your code.
Otherwise all Linux applications, drivers, and maybe even a monitor (since it ultimately depends on Linux GPL'ed code) MUST be GPL'ed. This doesn't sound correct.
What CherryOS has done is certainly dirty, but if they just took Pear's code (didn't change a thing) and put a GUI layer on top, I think they'd be fine. Now if they made changes to Pear's code, then they would have to release that (and not the GUI stuff) as GPL'ed. However, as long as they aren't modifying the GPL'ed code and just using it as a dependancy I think they are OK.
Dirty maybe, but OK as far as GPL. This may be why they need donations and the EFF hasn't jumped at the chance to litigate the case.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
straight from the horses mouth
the link even includes reference to the software used for the comparison.
The test was conducted using UltraCompare, a standard tool for application comparison. The test used CherryOS 1.2 and PPC 0.4 Pre as the basis for comparison. The UltraCompare test works by running through every possible process of the application. The results show the matching number of bytes and gives a consensus on whether the core architectures of the two products are the Same, Similiar or Different. As you will see from the results below, CherryOS and PearPC are radically different products.
apparently running "diff pearPC.exe cherryOS.exe" is all you need to do.
ironically, the screenshot included on the page appears to me to be more evidence that they include similarities. something that, in the binary, is even more damning.
and no, the UltraCompare site shows no evidence that it can "[run] through every process of the application"
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
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.
It's not "about time". Posts that look like identical twins to the grandparent pop up in every discussion on either GPL enforcement or copyright infringement, and have been doing so for a looong time.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
What choice do artists but to sign to major labels if they want any success? I try to support smaller independent labels as much as possible, but they don't have the marketing power of the larger labels nor the finances.
Same s**t, different day
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.
but the chicks will think your wearing tight underwear.
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.
That is a distinction that is completely lost on (C) law.
Huh? I don't know what sort of sick legislation is in place where you live, but copyright law certainly differentiates between commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement around these parts. The latter is usually fined, the former may result in prison.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
However, the issue most people are bringing up is the moral one, rather then the legal one. Ignoring the fallacy of assuming that there is a Slashdot group mind, the prevailing attitude seems to be that: Non-commercial copying for private use (downloading TV and music, lending them to friends etc without making money on it) may be illegal (malum prohibitum) but is not morally wrong (malum en se). Although the law may state that the action is wrong, people do not feel that it is and thus do not have a sense of moral outrage. The common analogy is with speeding; most people are not morally outraged by someone exceeding the speed limit. However, the commercial distribution of files, or in this case the copying and redistribution of work without attribution for money is believed by most people to be both malum prohibitum and malum en se. As they believe that this is actually a bad act, there is a sense of moral outrage when such acts occur. Thus the question of why people can get upset about one type of infringement but not another when both are against the law is a fallacy; the prevailing attitude is that the two actions are not analogous although the current laws state that they are.
I'm going to write an email to the CherryOS folks and suggest they add a blurb to their "about" page or whatever that says "Contains code by PearPC". That would be "fair", no? After all, the "fair use" encoded in the GPL is Stallman's very own definition, and since we all consider copyright to be evil, then it should be OK.
Fair?
If Cherry OS was just an add on to a Pear PC, does that mean that all of the Cherry OS code can be legally used by Pear PC now if Pear PC wins?
Now, if the people like you, who are thinking rationally about this, weren't completely, thoroughly drowned out by posters (and more importantly, moderators) that DO leap awkwardly to the defense of anyone "caught" with IP they shouldn't have (or, shouldn't use in the way they do, anyway) to soothe their guilty downloading consciences, then I'd feel less like taking the occasional jab. But the prevailing noisemakers on slashdot actually do seem bent on propping up the whole "information wants to be free" (but only when it suits them) world view. Making a not very subtle joke about it seems the least I can do in the face of the unrelenting hypocrisy on that subject. If not hypocrisy in deed, then hypocrisy in silence. I know you know what I mean.
Incidentally, what makes you think that I'm picking on "advocates" of P2P systems? I'm not. I'm picking on people who are too cheap to pay for their entertainment, and who too often do stumble their way into only semi-related IP discussions and flail about, philosophically.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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?
After all, information wants to be free, does it not? And, lawyering is all about information, is it not?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
In the GPL there is a HUGE distinction between using and distributing GPL covered code.
You can use all that you want.
But if you distribute GPL code like CherryOS, here are GPL requirements that are not met by CherryOS
- you have to distribute the source of the GPL code, the full text of the GPL license, and a full acknoledgement of the authors.
- if you distribute, along with the GPL code a work that is dependant on that code, you have to distribute the whole work under the GPL terms.
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Sending a copy of a track you ripped from a CD to a friend without compensation may be fair use. Selling a copy of software you modified in a way contrary to the license under which it was distributed is blatantly illegal copyright infringement.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
What I don't like about draconian laws about P2P, the abundance of DRM, etc, is that the providers seem to view the customers as "potentially criminal everyone of them". Besides, law isn't equal everywhere in the world. At least in Norway, I can so far *legally* download from the P2P networks. That's not against the law. Uploading, on the other hand, you can't legally do without permission.
DRM is another thing. It goes against the fair use laws that most countries have. Add legal protections of DRM to that, and the media companies can effectively decide whether the customer is allowed to use their legally given rights to copy for personal use.
Add that to the blatantly misleading numbers that the record companies are giving about their losses. Fact is, there hasn't been any proven loss in sale since the introduction of P2P, *despite* them doing everything they can to make their customers hate them. That sort of puzzles me.
Now, personally I haven't downloaded anything significantly off P2P networks. Oh, I have downloaded an mp3 or two just to get a feel for the music of some random artist, but if I like what I hear? I'll buy the good damned album. Like almost everyone else I know.
Except a few die-hard P2P-users, that nowhere near weighs up the added marketing. And most of them would definitely not have *bought* everything they've downloaded, so the loss isn't realistic at all..
So please - do *not* go around believeing that all free software/open source-users are hardcore copyright infringers also. It's simply not true. I think the hardcore copyright-infringers are much more likely to use the latest and "greatest" version of Windows. Pirated, of course. But a few of them will probably also use, and even like and advocate, free software/open source. Is is the free software community that is at fault for that?
More money to the developers means (hopefully) a better investment in the product. In the end, we benefit through recieving an improved product.
The difference between violating the GPL and downloading off of a p2p server is that I never claimed that I wrote the songs I'm downloading, nor do I try and re-sell them under that guise.
I have spoken with the EFF, and the FSF, and softwarefreedom.org
In fact, the latter is specifically the person that informed me that I will likely need some legal funds.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
This company NEEDS to get shut down. It is about time that people like them are told that GPL is no joke and just because there is no company behind the project doesn't make it right or legal to steal code. All this could have been avoided if they just realsed the source like GPL requires. They can still sell the software and there would be just as manu people buying it because there are very very few windows users that would ever compile a software from source or even know how. So it's Maui's fault. I thought there was a fund created exactly to the purpose that PearPC is collecting money? This whole thing is about a thousand times worst than MS badmouthing linux every chance they get. Wouldn't surprise me if that company's servers start to get dossed pretty soon just like SCO's did. They deserve it though. Oh yeah and ther new company that should sue then Apple for encouraging piracy and violations of the apple agreement. That'll teach them.
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
I've been robbed twice. The one time a crackhead stole $10 from my hand while I was trying to hand it to the cashier. The second time a kid pulled a shotgun on me and got $20 from my pocket. However I had a lot more in my wallet. I took my time getting the $20 from my pocket so he was happy to get it.
Did I get angry? Nope. Did I care? Nope. Even though I don't have a lot of money... I was happy because I'm not in a state where I have to rob and steal to survive. I'll write it off as charity. So yeah I don't mind if people steal from me as long as they don't have more money than I.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
So what does GPL violations have to do with EFF? EFF protects our right to free speach on the internet, it has nothing to do with enforcing copyright licenses. Asking EFF to help out with this case is like asking the ACLU to help out. I donate money to both organizations, and I sure as hell don't any of them putting their resources into enforcing a copyright license since it does NOT affect any of my constitutional rights, consumer rights or personal freedoms.
I sure hope you're not donating to organization that you do not fully understand their mission statement.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
GPL is an anti-copyright copyright license (copyleft). If copyright didn't exist, the GPL wouldn't have to.
There is no 'fair use' clause in the GPL (that is a mandatory part of copyright law).
Fair Use:
The right set forth in Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act, to use copyrighted materials for certain purposes, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair: (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/definiti.shtml
Defending individuals who donate their work to the public - good
Defending pigopolists who screw consumers, cheat artists and bribe politicians - bad
Please mod down parent post, it is a troll.
It doesn't matter; I don't think PearPC cares if anyone buys. I think they'd be more upset over someone else releasing their unfinished work...and not on their terms. Think if you were in the middle of a large, potentially-prestigous, non-commercial (yet) project. Say you're just getting it right, things are coming together, and you're working swiftly towards your ultimate goal...then FWOOMP! someone slides in, puts your uncompleted work up on the market, claims it as their own, and charges people for it--and gives you nothing but trouble in return. You'd probably be pretty upset, too.
Call it whatever you like. I'd probably call it a matter of honorability.
I think the big difference here is in the source of the set of rules we're using - the lenses we're viewing each situation through.
With copyrighted music, the majority of people here feel that the industry's use of copyright is invalid. The copyright rules they use were developed by politicians and industry representatives, not individual users and content creators.
The GPL has had input from the people who both create content to release under it, and the users of the content. It addresses many of the problems we have with copyright law, while giving businesses the ability to profit from work they have done.
Since we approach the two sets of rules differently, we come to different conclusions about people who would be in the same situation if we approached the rules in the same way.
Plagiarism and unauthorized distribution are both violations of copyright law.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
If PearPC sues CherryOS and wins, which I don't doubt they will, who gets the money?
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.
Somehow I don't think Robin Hood would have been such a hero if he stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
On a moral level I think you can make a distinction, stealing $1 from a person who has $100 is less moraley corrupt then stealing the same amount from a person who has $1.
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
erm whatever.. =)
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
I was thinking more along the lines of the Redhat and IBM diaries, but Stallman sill do too. (didn't Apple use some funny BSD os, and that odd KHtml component?)
"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."
And I could do anything with there's. You could take my code, make The Bungi rocket v5, but because there is no copyright I could take your Bungi rocket v5 and give it away for free. Ok, so it may be a little harder to get the source from you, but once I do I can give that away for free too, sounds like GPL+ to me.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Cherry OS pretty much sucks right now--it'll probably die on the vine anyway. Save your legal fee money and make PearPC a better product.
I tried installing CherryOS on several machines--following the instructions, etc. I got kernel panics from MacOS X on all of them right out of the starting gate.
Maybe they should be called "Lemon OS" (or has Microsoft patented that one, too?)
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
People are willing to donate money to protect a GPL author, but heaven forbid they pay for anything they're pirating on Bittorrent. You guys are such hypocrites!
"Gimme that, it's mine! Gimme that, it's mine! Here's money to protect a fellow GPL author. Gimme that, it's mine! Gimme that, it's mine!"
I'll make sure to pirate John Carmack's next game because you guys say it's okay to do so.
1) Commercial software company moves to GPL license
2) Commercial software company sues themself over the move and then asks for donations to support the case.
3) PROFIT!
Congratulations, you just found out the middle step!
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Copyright isn't criminal at all in the states. It's a purely civil offense, so the only redress is a suit.
Is it criminal in the UK? How does that work, someone tells the police you copied their software so they arrest you? That sounds kind of scary.
Yes this post was ment to be pointless..... they cant all be serious
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Just beware when it becomes interactive (overflow)!
IMO, stealing from Billy G should carry a lesser offense than stealing from the people who beg out in front of the library. In fact, I claim that stealing $100 from a millionaire should carry the same penalty as stealing $.10 from a thousandaire.
Stealing is only morally correct when there is no other recourse. Stealing money in order to preserve onesself is morally correct. It only makes sense to steal from those who will miss it least.
I think you should go read your history. Copyright hasn't been around for ever, and I don't see to many people complaining that their great grand parents died before they could have any children.
I don't think 'standards' such as the English language came about because of copyright, an I see plenty of creativity in languages everyday, how does this fit into "Worse yet, you can count on this"
Also, how does Microsoft (a strong proponent of copyright) not support standards when 'free' versions of software manage to?
Do you see third world countries thanking everyone for the cheep drugs that copyright is giving them?
Though you may 'think' that from copyright and patents creativity will blossom, I think you've been browsing www.microsoft.propaganda.com too long. just look at any country that doesn't have strong copyright laws and see how much farther the dollar goes.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Your average music fan wants to play fair, but feels positively exploited by 1) the astonishing price inflation of retail chain stores such as Tower and 2) the pressure put on artists to make a catchy single, some second rate padding, and sell it as a full album. They are the basically virtuous Lochean person who is driven to commit petty crimes because of their conditions. The current P2P crisis is really just because *AA haven't kept abreast with technology and absolutely refuse to give up their massive profit margins. Nobody would mind getting Divx quality movies for $5, or even $10 a pop, and the companies might actually make a profit off of it.
For example, when I had a friend who worked for Tower Records, I bought a ton of CDs for cost + 20%, usually like $12. Now I buy few, if any, because they're damn near $20.
CherryOS's developers, or scam artists if you will, want to make a quick buck based on somebody else's product. They are Hobbesian, State-of-Nature types who will do anything to get ahead, steal anything that's not nailed down, and are in every concievable way, "nasty, brutish, and short."
And you're just the queen to toss it!
cherries, apples, pears... why even bother? my new banana project is worth 5 times as much as any old apple. oh... wait... that was the 80's.
I'm sick and fucking tired of Slashdotters going up-in-arms over GPL violations but when it comes to actual copyrights that have been around for awhile.. let the copyright holder starve!
I mean, what CherryOS is doing is wrong.. but jesus get a grip with the double standards
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
"Why sould you distinguish between the two?"
People have always done so and will continue to do so in the future. I for one don't consider it stealing from the rich, I consider it stealing from the Mob.
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.
Like it or not that's the attitude.
evil is as evil does
Then again, no one is forcing me to use GPL code, much as no one forces me to download the latest Britney Spears CD off LimeWire.
If you are going to consider the music|movie industry's stance on copyright and fair use "unethical" or "invalid" then I'm going to do the same with the GPL.
In the end, however, copyright law is that: law. We do not get to ignore it in some cases based on vague philosophical arguments and cry KILL KILL KILL in others. CherryOS is wrong as much as Johnny Hacker is downloading last year's Simsons episodes in a convenient DivX format for easy viewing and burning to DVDR. That is my point.
You could believe that intellectual property is purely wrong, but for pragmatic reasons, code licensed under the GPL should be protected to encourage movement to a world where all information is freely shared.
As long as you're not talking about fairness (which is purely a subjective concept), I think you can utilize laws laws that you don't believe in to your advantage without being a hypocrite. But I admit I don't have much with which to back this position up.
-------
Incite and flee.
I just don't get it - who is advising Maui X-Stream? Why would the company be so dumb as to do this? Complying wouldn't hurt them at all - in fact, it could help them, and save them money as well.
Consider: they could easily go the Apple route and built a proprietary GUI for Pear PC, while releasing their modified PearPC under the GPL and contributing their changes upstream to the original project. All this would require would be for them to post the source code for their modified PearPC on their site. Apple took this development approach with OS X (FreeBSD) and Safari (Konqueror). Probably as many people would buy CherryOS - no sales lost. But the PearPC developers would be pleased instead of litigious because they'd get development support from a company. And the company would be on friendly terms with the project, so they'd be able to work together to get the features they need for CherryOS implemented in the core project. Those features would be carried on in future versions of PearPC, ensuring that everyone has the same updates - in other words, it would be as if Maui X-Stream has more developers, without having to pay them. Money saved. Everyone happy.
Whoever told the PearPC folks to "speak with an Attorney" should be given his or her pink slip. The company is throwing out an opportunity to save money on development, and at the same time it is steering toward a long lawsuit they'll likely lose. Where do I sign up to be their strategic consultant? I never would have thought it, but I guess I'm qualified.
"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's exactly what stallman would love to achieve. The GPL is a hack of the copyright. As long as copyrights exist the GPL is a thorn on the side of the powers that be.
If copyrights didn't exist (at least in terms of software) the world of software would be very different. I for one think it would be much better then what we have today.
evil is as evil does
Actually, downloading itself may not be illegal depending on jurisdiction and other complexities.
Distributing music with authorization (regardless of medium of distribution) is usually a Copyright Violation. Again it depends on jurisdiction and other complexities on whether this is a crime though.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Can we donate using the Paypay on Sourceforge? With the current site being slashdotted I would like to donate using Sourceforge but I don't know if this would be the same?
Anyone know if the money will be used in the same way?
"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
If there were no copyright, then what CherryOS is doing to PearPC would be perfectly fine.
Even ignoring copyright, by claiming their product isn't based on PearPC they are committing fraud.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
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.
all of a sudden
i cant imagine why...
this sig has been discontinued.
Is'nt this a bit old news since this site allready had this news post the 23. But i surely hope that the PearPC developers sue CherryOS since it's breaking Apple's EULA (well Apple could sue them) another thing is the fact that CherryOS most likely has stolen most of its code from PearPC acording to this article from Wired.
Bits of News Giving you the latest bits.
Note the updated text:
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't justify my piracy. I just don't care. When I like something I try to buy it because in this fucked up world dollars means votes. So I want the higher ups to know that I want more of the things I like. But I'm sure I have stolen things that I enjoyed and never compensated those who created it. Oh well I guess that's on me and I'll pay for it in the end... right?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
" 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"
What about making a copy of a song available to anyone in the world who wants it. Those are the people the RIAA is suing.
Vote for Pedro
Not to the copyright holders. They don't get paid either way, and money was their motivation for selling the song to you. You may see it differently, but apparently a lot of copyright holders disagree with you on what's important. To be blunt, nobody - including the law - cares about your opinion. Or mine for that mater...
BTW, in your second case you might be dragged into court by the purchaser too. So I guess they are even more different than I first thought. It's what they have in common that's important to **AA.
I agreed with the first part of your post, but I would argue that in the United States, there is almost always an alternate recourse to stealing, therefore stealing $100 from a wealthy individual or stealing $.10 from a indigent person are both equal moral errors. Doesn't seem to stop people, though. Alternate recourses often involve putting down the crack pipe, cleaning yourself up, and getting a job. What a drag that would be. ;)
Sure, you could come up with some hypothetical situation where a poor person must steal to pay for an expensive medical procedure, or whatever, but subsistence-level wages are typically available to everyone in Western society, regardless of education or background. Stealing is virtually always inappropriate in such a cultural context.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
They're the same in all the ways you care about, so people who think they're different are hypocrites? CherryOS is lying to their customers about what they're selling as a way to make more money. They're trying to lock up and charge a fee for something that was given away to everyone. That's a pretty big difference to me.
Copyright gives control. Some use it to help others, some use it to screw others. I don't have to bend over and treat them the same just because you sneer at my "hypocrisy."
-- . . ramblin' . . .
I'm offtopic for answering a post?
Is thread-drift illegal on slashdot?
Is communication actively prevented?
-josh
Estimates show that people download double the number of songs each month that Apple has song on iTMS in its eintire existence. People who allow you to download free music are competitors to Apple and the music industry.
Vote for Pedro
The best resolution of a lawsuit is for that company will admit using the source and comply with the GPL. They will continue sell the support and easy installer just like Red Hat, Novell, etc.. The open-source project will not see a dime of that money (if there is any to be made) and that's it. Better to just release a easy to install binary for free. The software is so slow at this stage that no one in their right mind going to pay for it. Five minutes making a binary will save thousands in lawyer fees.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
To be fair, it is only a double standard if you believe that the current law, as written, is proper and defensible.
For my part, my big problem with the entertainment industry has nothing to do with them going after copyright violators. My problem with them is them pushing people around who write software that, while could be used to violate copyright, is also equally useful to preserve my fair use rights (the hullaballo over DeCSS, for example).
With that said, their behaviour in this doesn't justify me snagging their stuff, although I have done so in the past. In my defense I will say that whatever I've downloaded was stuff either a) I already bought on CD and just can't find the damn thing the moment I wanted to hear it. b) Was something I wanted to hear before buying and either 1) subsequently bought or 2) deleted because I didn't care for it enough to keep. I don't think this is a problem. Is it illegal? Case a, probably not. Case b, possibly, and perhaps likely. Is it hyprocritical of me to do so? No, unless I think the copyright laws as written are proper (and I don't).
People who produce media have to give me something better than "No trying before you buy" + "No refunds once you buy". With these two rules, I have no way of evaluating whether it is worth my money until the money is gone. With both rules in place, I am very reluctant to part with my money. Put me in the camp of "copyright is tolerable, but with fairly broad definitions of fair use."
No, but the law does punish more those who violate copyright for a profit motive versus a non-profit motive. If you're defending the law AS WRITTEN, you have to concede that selling someone else's work as your own is a larger wrong than making copies of someone else's work and sharing it. However, from this point of view, it is still a wrong, and I agree with you.
<comment mode="slashdot_tagline">You must be new here.<comment> :-)
"hink 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."
Think about it. If a business has to lower their price to make their product more attractive for you to buy because otherwise you'll download a copy for free, you've made money by saving money on every song you've downloaded. You've effectively lowered the value of the product.
Vote for Pedro
Money saved is money earned.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
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!
Since the donation page is /.'d, can you mirror the donation page elsewhere? Or perhaps post paypal info here?
Thanks! -LLM
Annoy a Conservative...
Give me a break. Just look at the EFF. They are against suing p2p copyright infringers, but support suing GPL copyright infringers. It's pretty clear from posts that the majority of /.ers feel the same way.
Vote for Pedro
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.
Food Fight!
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I just dowloaded the trial edition (which has to respect the original licenses as well). I found no GPL license. No authors acknoledgement. And no offer for getting the source code. I guess the PearPC authors have tried the same thing too , don't you think ? :)
"Either way, it's greed vs. advancing human kind."
Greed has been the primary motivator for advancing human kind. Thats what motivates people to compete harder and do better than the average person.
Vote for Pedro
Certainly gives new meaning to the term "memory leak" and "core dump", doesn't it?
The most striking piece of this article, for me, was the comment that when a PearOS developer tried to contact someone at the offending company's offices, they were just dismissed summarily with a "go talk to an attorney" response.
In recent months I have dealt with someone who gave me two similar responses (not related to the GPL, but a bounced check). First he asked "well, since you've got my address, why don't you just come out here and arrest me?" Next in an online conversation he suggested I take his firm "I'll never honor that check" answer to the district attorney. Then, when he got the certified letter from me trying to resolve the problem without involving a court, he messaged me online inviting me to file the suit, even offering to give me a list of lawyers to consult.
I'm amazed people still bluff like this -- he says "go on, then, sue me!" ... it's a no brainer to respond "um, okay, here's the suit" (I filed suit March 1, and take him to small claims April 11).
This CherryOS thing is clear-cut. It's as much a no-brainer as a bounced check small claims case is. The people working at this company have to know this. There's no conceivable way every person at that company (particularly the legal team, if it exists :) could honestly believe they have a unique, new product. There's no conceivable way this guy I'm suing can "win" the case -- a bounced check is actionable by itself regardless of circumstance (not that there are any).
There are only three possibilities in both these instances: 1) they're hoping we won't call their bluffs by actually filing suit, 2) they actually honestly think some magic loophole will save them, or 3) they really are as stupid as they seem.
Actually, I suppose there's a fourth option: they never plan to pay a judgment when they lose. It's easy for me; sell the judgment to a collection agency for 70% of its value, move on (punitive damages will still make it worth the trouble and the cut). For PearOS, it might be harder. If they actually win a judgment, there could be an appeal process (probably will be), and by the time that's over with, even when PearOS emerges triumphant, there won't be money left in the defendant company (or it'll just file for bankruptcy) to take. Hurrah, justice is served, or something.
I don't really know how to pick the most likely outcome here except, I suppose, to just wait and see.
Read my stuff.
It doesn't matter if CherryOS is selling the GPL code or not. It is still the exact same license violation.
And since all you slashbotters like to refer to GPL license violation as theft. Here's analogy for you. Someone steals my car and uses it himself, or someone steals my car and sells it. Should we ignore the person who steals my car and uses it personally? Yes this is a bad analogy, much like calling a GPL violation theft.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
( please see my other reply for more details.) The linux kernel is GPLed and provides a standard ISO POSIX API (that means all apllications that use this standard API can be independents from this kernel since they can run on all other POSIX systems as well) As for drivers if they are not distributed along with the LInux the kernel (i.e. downloaded separately) there is no problem. And there is a "laissez faire" attitude if they are distributed with the kernel (no Linux kernel developper seems to care).
KeS
Oldest first display shows one of the usual morons got in a few seconds ahead. However, for the Second Post (and beating most of the FP twits), it's of respectable quality... regardless of any allegations of karma whoring motives.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
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
I had the strangest feeling that if the CherryOS people were to turn around and sue the PearPC people for copyright infringement, it'd be the SCO case all over again. Hmm. I wonder why I feel that way...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
These people do not claim to be the Mat Groining , The thing you are missing is that fair use does not include profit or fraudulant claims to creation.
Your analogy is flawed , its comparing apples to a a cake which includes apple flavouring
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
why cant i troll myself? i was correcting my own post. heh
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
i'm guessing this will degenerate into a flamewar over filesharing.
*glances at the comments*
sigh.
sum.zero
- if you distribute, along with the GPL code a work that is dependant on that code, you have to distribute the whole work under the GPL terms.
I have a problem with this statement, since the line you quoted specifically mentions "derived" works.
I do not believe writing a GUI for a piece of GPL'd software is writing software derived from said GPL work.
I add that the libc (C library) that is used to compile applications for Linux is licensed under the LGPL.
No, the problem is that I've never seen anyone here go to great lengths to rationalize and justify this type of copyright infringement.
If you think that's a problem, do it yourself. It's obvious that noone in their right mind would try to justify this type of copyright infringement, but I guess you might just fit that bill and should give it a shot.
There's a big difference in the types of infringement.
When stealing music you're basically keeping popstars alive by not letting them afford personal jets and coke for the pilot. This is obvioulsy fairly simple to justify.
When stealing GPL'ed software and packaging it as your own, you're robbing a volunteer worker who out of the goodness of his heart gives something to everyone for free. This is obviously just plain evil, and should be dealt with swiftly and efficiently.
I agree, there's a lot of hypocrisy in this debate. I believe though I can clarify this explanation of the knee-jerk response techies have: I should have said that people think "knowledge and creativity" want to be free, not information in general. My SSN is not useful to the general public unless someone wants to "steal" my identity.
:)
Here's the premise of music swapping as I see it: I'm guessing that most Slashdotters who pirate music/warez are leechers instead of sharers - they claim they would be perfectly fine without the product and the victim loses only a potential sale; but sharing with others is allowing those who absolutely need the product get away with not buying it. Most slashdot pirates aren't trying to inflict financial damage on others, they just want something for free that they'd never pay for - but they don't wish to be complicit in helping others "steal" potential revenue. This seems to imply that there are ethical pirates and unethical ones, which I don't understand
To answer your question about personal info, I believe many Slashdotters feel that they would gladly share their own ideas, creativity and intellectual property to the broader community. But that doesn't mean they want to share their bank PIN, street address or mother's maiden name.
-Robert
Really, so you correlated the usernames of the people posting posting pro P2P with the usernames of people posting pro GPL and found they were all the same people, and that there were hundreds of them?
/.ers" because you see lots of posts in both topic areas, recognized a few names as common to both categories of discussion, and assume that the two groups overlap?
You have some statistics saying that it's the same group of people?
Or are you saying "the majority of
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I do not believe writing a GUI for a piece of GPL'd software is writing software derived from said GPL work.
Nobody said writing for a GPL product or using a GPL product is restrictive.
I said that if you distribute a GPL product, all works you distribute with it and that depends on it, must be licensed under the GPL.
I second that motion.
No matter where you go , there you are.
Is the OS X EULA really the only thing stopping clone manufacturers? What's to stop some Taiwanese vendor from selling a cheap beige-box PowerPC with Yellow Dog Linux (or Darwin for that matter), whith a big warning: "Danger - under no circumstances should you install MacOS X!" I'm aware that Macs no longer rely on ROMs, but it seems there must be some other factor stopping potential clone makers.
Further, I think the legality of bypassing a EULA is untested (for example, using Interface Builder to swap the 'Accept' and 'Decline' buttons). At least in the United States, you do not need a license to use software, only to make copies. Section 117 of copyright laws says:
Essentially, loading the software onto a disk and into memory isn't considered infringement (even though it's technically a copy). This is why you can use GPL'd software (or any other software that you legally obtained, for that matter) without accepting the license.
Not that I'm eager to see Mac clones back on the market... it nearly killed them last time.
The elements of contract are:
- Offer
- Acceptance
- Consideration
So, if I walk into a retailer and they offer OS X under terms that I am willing to accept, and I give them the amount of money (consideration) they asked for, when we have a contract. Any additional terms or conditions that the seller wishes to assert after I've agreed to the stated terms of the sale are completely unenforceable. Suppose someone were to purchase a Chevy floormat from a dealer, then when they go to add Calvin urinating on the logo and put it in their Ford pickup, they find a GM EULA that says they can't use it that way. I can't imagine an attorney that would prosecute that one.[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Not exactly. When someone puts a song on a P2P network and others download it, they're getting it for free. It's unknown whether those people would pay for the content otherwise. (Even if they liked it, each consumer only has a limited amount of money.) It's also unknown whether the person will buy a copy of the work independent of his pirated copy (which sounds ridiculous, but happens frequently.)
When someone sells your product as their own, you KNOW that every person who buys from them would have bought from you, had they known that you made the product. They have stolen a sale from a person who would have definitely paid X amount for your product. The worst part is, the customer already paid for the product, and therefore they aren't going to buy it again from the real owner. It's the difference between thinking you've lost sales, and knowing you have.
Of course, many copyright holders are willing to count a theoretical loss of sale as a real one. This has worked to their advantage in the past, but most of those "lost sales" are illusionary, since the customer wouldn't have paid for the downloaded game/song/movie anyway. It's like saying you could have made a hundred thousand more dollars a year if you licensed oranges.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
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.
The insightful comments I see in the "Slashbork *AA-story-of-the-week" posts regarding copyright violation seem to revolve around the *AA groups referring to the acts as "theft" or "piracy", and the community saying that "it's copyright infringement, which isn't as bad as theft or piracy." Which doesn't mean that copyright infringement is good, just that it's less bad than the other two, and should be punished in an equitable manner (ie, with fines, acknowledgment of wrongdoing, etc. not the cliched Office Space pound-me-in-the-ass Federal Prison).
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
hawk
A California jury found against Toshiba, awarding $465.4 million in damages to Lexar.
You have some statistics saying that it's the same group of people?
Why does it matter? The point is that many bright, articulate, thoughtful people show up on slashdot, start reading, and immediately form a distinct impression that it's hip deep in hypocrisy in exactly the way that you're saying it's not. It doesn't even matter if it's not true: I'm talking about how readily a casual reader can form that opinion. That you're being so defensive about it indicates that you know I'm right.
So, that being said, the real question is: why is it that way? To use a somewhat clumsy analogy, it's sort of like how easy it is for a lot of people to assume that all Muslims are terrorists, or that all white guys with dogs (hey! that's me!) are biggoted rednecks. Why? Because not enough white guys with dogs say non-Rednecky things in front of the people drawing the wrong conclusions. No, we're too busy. Or, not enough live-and-let-live Muslims make it loudly (enough) plain that they're appalled at Taliban-Al-Queda-like thinking. At least, not in front of the people that would benefit from hearing it.
Meaning: would someone deeply making notes about which slashdotters do and don't think what about IP issues come to a different conclusion than someone briefly hopping in and out of IP-related threads? Probably. But the fastest way to make your point (which is also mine, however indirectly) is to step into the Infringement-For-Entertainment fray, and light those people up. Given the dull roar of witless defenses of song stealing, it's tempting just to leave it all alone and concentrate on, say, obscure GPL conflicts over operating system emulators... but that's not where the population's hearts and minds will be won on these issues. Make this subject easier for everyone by helping to deflate the notion that there are only, say, 6 slashdot users who think that music pirating is a bad thing. As long as that myth persists, other IP discussions are a perfectly good place to raise the issue, again and again.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
For what its worth, the license is not a per-copy ticket. If you redistribute the code without explicit permission of the author you are technically violating copyright law. The GPL is an affirmative defense against that charge. If you violate the GPL, it is void, and therefore not a defense; hence, you must stop distributing.
-HopeOS
I should note that I support the rights of artists and I'm not a supporter of piracy, although I am vehemently against the RIAA and MPAA, as well as all cartels of that kind, and I approve of the results of P2P, which is a shaking down of those extremely broken and unhealthy markets, although I don't approve of the mechanism.
I have no problem stealing from the rich. However I get angry when people steal from the poor.
I guess that implies that you believe that once a person is poor or rich, that they will always stay that way. Other wise you'd have to have the thieves ask about financial status. Another problem is the country thing, who is poor in the US, is probably pretty rich in a place like Bangladesh; who's standard of poor or rich shall we use?
Some countries in east africa, wealth is measured in the head of cattle a person owns, and I don't own any cows, I'm so poor! Some countries in west Africa measure wealth by the number of wives a person has, and I only have 1, I met a person with 13 once!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Spot on ,Remember also that the copyright holders in alot of cases' is not the artist ,This realy complicates the situation .Copyright law is abusive in alot of forms . i am going to add you to my Freinds list as this is a good concise explination
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Funny I thought that Robin Hood actualy stole from the sherrif, a political appointee who was operating unsupervised, durring a time of war and was assesing and collecting taxes for the purpose of personal gain.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
For greedy people that is.
In that case GPL is not for you.
Was Einstein greedy?
Was DVD Jon greedy?
Was Linus greedy?
You get the point.
I take it you don't watch much Star Trek...
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
So there are no absolute definitions of rich and poor? Well if that is true there exists no absolute definitions of good and evil. Therefore morality is pointless. Thank you. You proved my argument.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
ROFL! That's one very gray shade of gray you've got going there. I'd ask you how you rationalize that, but I really don't think I'd hear anything I haven't heard before from other Slashbots.
Thanks for making my point, BTW.
Even if EULAs are binding, this assumes that the makers of CherryOS have actually bought OSX themselves. If they have just built a graphical shell around PearPC, then there's no reason to assume that they have, since they'd have no need to (PearPC does all the testing and development of the actual emulator).
I don't think that even in Corporate America the declarations of corporations have the force of law against people who have never had any dealings with those corporations. Even Disney has to bribe the Congress to get the copyright extended ad infinitum.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The difference is between corporations and the little man. I think there is a difference between a big conglomerate corporations trying to sue some 15 year old into oblivion because he downloaded a song by the band-of-the-week, compared to a couple of guys getting together to make an open source product and then some evil company coming in and stealing that product. Any time it's evil corporation against little man, people (especially Slashdot) will root for the little man. I believe that's rightly so, but that argument is for another post.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Remember that these same types objected to the Player Piano and the VCR - they would "hurt the artists"...
It's all about powerful biz-types using the legal system to protect and extend their own wealth. The drug companies do the same thing - they will use the courts to delay the end of their patent protection for new drugs, knowing they will lose, in order to make a few extra million. Not that I entirely disagree with these practices in all ways - they seem to be good strategies at times! Immoral, in many cases IMO, but good strategies nonetheless. Certainly less moral than someone who freeloads on the 'net. The freeloader isn't consciously trying to be greedy, at least not in my experience. I'm not an ethicist, but perhaps now that I think about it, when a freeloader consciously tries to save money by using eDonkey, his moral status is equal with the anti-Player Piano-type companies? Who knows...
Just because some of us think that TiVO with commercial-skip, dvd-vcr combo players (with built in, blatantly labeled, large COPY button) and Player Pianos are NEAT doesn't mean we want the GPL ripped to shreds.
Nuance is the key word here - lets try not be simple-minded generalists, ok?
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
MAC makes makeup. Apple makes computers.
Stupid stupid stupid.
Someone steals your bycicle, adds a toot horn to it and then sells it for a profit. Someone steals your bycicle and just rides around in it.
Which of these is not theft?
Stealing is stealing and copyright is copyright, no matter how many cute rationalizations you manage to come up with to try and prove differently.
This is obvioulsy fairly simple to justify.
Of course it is. To you. That's my point.
Under intellectual property law they are the same, regardless of the "Robin Hood" factor that you seem to like so much. Until said laws change, however, your point is invalid.
See here, then look for "3c90x" on this page.
I am looking over PearPC's documentation and it appears that in order that the client OS may network, PearPC emulates a virtual 3c90x ethernet card visible to the client OS, packets sent to which are available to the host operating system by way of a special network interface.
This virtual ethernet card has a MAC address, configurable from the second link above.
Therefore, PearPC is in fact a MAC emulator!
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I, personally, don't rationalize it. But it's not hypocritical to do so. It's not even especially gray, assuming that you don't subscribe to the commercial exploitation theory of copyright.
the irony of the CherryOS thing is they could have put a little tiny thing in their license at the bottom in really tiny print saying contains GPL'd code, for a copy of the source please call for information; and nobody would have noticed or cared.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
That's not how I see it at all. I see it as two groups, each setting terms by which their products can be used, each seeking legal recourse when people attempt to use them in other ways.
Whether someone is an underdog or not is irrelevant; if you wish a legal right to be afforded to you, you must afford it to all like you. That is, if you wish people to respect your copyrights, you must respect those of others.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Even though im a big Apple fan, screw them on this issue.
I bought the box, its mine.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm amazed anyone still believes this, given that it has not been true for eight years now: the No Electronic Theft act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1997, makes commercial piracy, or non-commercial piracy where the value of works pirated over a 180-day period exceeds $1000, a criminal offense, punishable by heavy fines, several years in jail, or both.
That right? Well, guess I'm putting away my eyepatch, hook, and pegleg. Aaaargh!
Browsing the CVS repository, it looks like nothing has been checked in for the last 5 months, and many things haven't been updated for upwards of 10 months.
:]
I was very excited about this project, but there's been no visible progress with it, and it's becoming a Michael Jackson/Terry Schiavo-like thing to talk about. A GPL football, if you will.
Sure, it's a good test of the GPL, which needs court cases, but this thing will never reach the courts anyway, the CherryOS people would fold up and run for the border as soon as things got real.
Maybe they should save these kinds of announcements for times when they post new versions
No I didn't, I reject that a religious concept of good and evil, as a basis of morality. I fear the results of what happens when these ultra-religious Bible/Torah/Quaran thumpers finaly lose the religion. It's self delusional to rationalize an action to be right or wrong depending on how you view the effects on the victim
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It's common knowledge to anyone who knows much about the business end of the recording industry how bad the contracts are that the major labels offer to new bands. (No, I'm not talking about you're average garage-band teenager who is trying to figure out how to play the latest pop-punk song of the week, but folks who actually know what happens when you sign a record contract.) Since you apparently have never seen any evidence of this, a quick Google search for "record contracts" turned up this link and this link. There's lots more evidence out there. This is just what a quick search turned up.
Both of those articles are rather lengthy, so I've quoted a few sentences from the end of the second article here:
Does that sound like a good deal to you?!
This is technically true, but you're completely missing the point. Why do you suppose that bands sign with major labels? The younger bands probably have no idea what they're getting themselves into, and the rest know that signing to a major label is their only possible chance of "making it big." Why is this, you ask? Because the major labels are the only ones with the big marketing budgets and distribution channels necessary to get your music played on Clear Channel and sold at WalMart. You have to be a big name artist with a couple of hit albums to your credit before the majors will negotiate a decent contract with you.
Do you suppose the majors see P2P as a threat to their iron grip on the distribution channel? One can only speculate. If an independent artist could get mainstream exposure through the internet, then why would they sign a major label contract? Technology is to the point now that even a $5k recording budget can yield a professional sounding album at a local studio. Even if the record industry's argument that P2P hurts records sales is legit, this does make one wonder if lost record sales are the only motive for their actions.
Ever wonder why so many independent artists support P2P? Apparently it's not hurting their record sales. If the artist makes $.56 per album who is really getting screwed by P2P?
Copyright law does not compensate authors and inventors with money, it compensates them with control.
If you respect copyright law, then you will respect the control it grants to both the GPL coder and the RIAA artists equally.
GPL software is not given freely, it comes with terms and conditions spelled out in the GPL. But the music published by the RIAA and crew is similarly distributed under restrictive terms and conditions, although those terms are not as clearly spelled-out as the GPL.
If you do not respect copyright law, then I fail to see how you can have any realistic expectation that others will.
We, as individuals, appear to believe that we have much more to gain by not respecting copyright than by respecting it. After all, compare the amount of money you've lost by people pirating your own copyrighted works against the amount of money you've saved by downloading stuff from p2p. No brainer, eh.
But we, as the Free Software Community, must view things differently, since the community has everything to lose and nothing to gain by not respecting copyright. That's why it's also a no-brainer to react with fury whenever the terms of the GPL are violated.
So here's the question to you: are you a supporting member of the Free Software Community or not? 'Cause you can't have it both ways.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
My email address is krach42@gmail.com
If you send money to my paypal account at that address, it will be taken for the PearPC defense, as I don't use PayPal for anything else.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
No, only those that link with the software. If it can be demonstrated that their GUI is entirely their code, and is independent from development of PearPC, then that's fine.
But regardless of that, they still need to release the changes that they've made to the PowerPC CHRP emulation, and give proper accrediation of who wrote it (simple enough in including the source code)
The thing is that nVidia can get away with their binary X11 driver, because X11 allows them to use a binary interface, which speaks to their open-source kernel driver, which does hardly anything but provide a callback so that parts of the binary driver can run in kernel mode.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
It's self delusional to rationalize an action to be right or wrong depending on how you view the effects on the victim.
There are two stances one can take. There exists absolute rules in which one can infer a moral action in any situation. Or there exist no absolute rules and morality is based on belief and feeling.
I accept the latter. I do not rationalize my actions but rather take responsibility for them. I accept whatever consequences there exists for an action I take. But I'm not going to delude myself with morality and believe somehow I'm a better person than someone else. And when you think about that's the only role morality plays in people's lives. It makes them feel better or superior than other people.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
This would violate the GPL: you don't have the source to whatever GUI extras CherryOS have added.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
So how hard would it be for Cherry to get, say, me to D/L PearOS, change 1 line of code (or not), and redistribute it under the GPL myself? I have a license to redistribute Pear under GPL, and I don't think there's a clause that prevents me from distributing it to some clown that's violated the GPL before.
So I question how that clause works with the general nature of the GPL.
Because my contribution under the GPL says that what I've done is everyones, and that everyone has a right to view, use, and redistribute changes to it. (Free as in Speech)
:P)
One could quite possibly have the personal morals that all work should be community property, and thus they would support copyleft, but not closed copyrights.
Don't think someone is a hypocrite just because they support copyright in one situation, but not in another.
I on the other hand, respect copyright, and copyleft, and I feel others should do the same. (My music is downloaded from internet radio, and not stored to my computer. So it's legal
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
only those that link with the software The legal text of the GPL only uses the word independent. And never the word link. You say If it can be demonstrated that their GUI is entirely their code, and is independent from development of PearPC, then that's fine. while the GPL doen't talk about development: can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves IANAL
'Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely (if ever) gained (and maintained) without sacrifice and self-denial.' - Martin Luthor King
found here
Someone steals your bycicle, adds a toot horn to it and then sells it for a profit. Someone steals your bycicle and just rides around in it.
Amazing. Well done!
Could this be it? The case that truly tests the GPL in court? I'm not sure I've ever heard of a GPL-related case ever going to court. Does anyone know of an instance?
Assuming GPL has never been tested in court, and this goes, it might be a *good* thing (apologies to the creators of PearPC for this comment, I do sympathize with your plight, and I hope you sue the ever-loving crap out of them) because it will finally set some court precedance for the GPL.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I think you'll find that's "occurred once" and "six thousand years ago" ;)
I originally posted material on the PearPC developer list right after CherryOS was released (including some of my own comparisons of the binaries and stuff). One hilarious thing is that CherryOS has dialogs that say they're formatting an HPFS volume (and more windows that mention the filesystem HPFS) - the funny thing is that MacOS X uses the HFS+ filesystem (OS 9 uses HFS), so right there you know that these people have no clue about the operating system they're supporting. They also claimed that the whole software app was developed by a single guy in 4 months... any person who's familiar with architecture emulators knows that a statement like that is insane - writing an entire software-based PowerPC cpu emulator, along with the hardware emulation layers all by one guy in 4 months?! That is similar to a person saying that Bill Gates wrote Windows 95 all by himself back in '95 lol.
0 0501.html
Here's my stash of comparisons; there's many other pages on other sites with info:
http://www.tliquest.net/ryan/cherryos
The in-depth article that features some of my research is here:
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/0
-eventhorizon
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
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.
Google cache (hard to read)
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Someone might actually be trying to raise the general quality of comments on slashdot by (gasp!) posting well-written and well-thought out comments.
We can't have that. Burn him at the stake!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Yes, because you know for a fact that the same people who defend downloading the latest Madonna MP3 are the same ones up in arms over this.
There is a difference between software and music. With software, it's trivial to avoid infringement: don't read anybody else's code. On the other hand, everybody is exposed to music every day, whether he or she likes it or not. In addition, the space of legally distinct melodies is so small that if you write a song, odds are that it will be similar to another song by pure coincidence. And if it happens to be similar to a song that you happen to have heard on the radio over a decade ago, you can be found liable of copyright infringement and ordered to pay damages in excess of six figures USD.
Copyrights and patents cannot be "lost" in the way you describe
But they can be lost through laches. If an owner of an exclusive right harms an alleged infringer by delaying legal action, the owner of the exclusive right may not have grounds to collect damages for infringements that occurred prior to the legal action.
Plagiarism would possibly be a violation of law even if there were no law forbidding the making and distribution of copies. It's called "reverse passing off" or "moral rights" depending on your jurisdiction.
I think that by "professional artist" the parent was refering to someone who's full time job is making creative works (ie music). Yes creation has gone on for thousands of years without copyright but very few people have been able to make a living off of it, and, being that copying and distrobution of works is so easy today, I dont see how anyone could make a living off of it now.
Mac-- short for Macintosh, a product line of Apple
I guess it is the front page...
I realise I may regret asking this question, but which one of you and the manatee is nude?
(Possibly both, I guess.)
The CherryOS executables seem to be compressed, to hide plaintext symbols (security through obscurity lol). They're trying to hide their tracks. I just put 3 versions of CherryOS on my site, the third being the latest one, for comparison purposes. This is just getting insane.
Here's the site:
http://www.tliquest.net/ryan/cherryos
Go into the "app" directory
-eventhorizon
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
to all those who are interested in some serious proof, here it is and its pretty much indisputable...
4 7145
http://www.memestreams.net/users/abaddon/blogid48
A guy pointed a shotgun at you and threatened to kill you and you didn't get mad, didn't even care? Wow, you must be some kind of saint. No way could I keep my cool after that kind of insult.
If they can show that PearPC's code is being distributed, then CherryOS need to show that they have the right to do so. The GPL doesn't give them that right, because they're clearly not abiding by it. So the question is, what else gives them that right? The answer is: nothing. They don't have that right. So they're illegally copying and distributing copyright material: clear breach of copyright. (At least, that's how it appears to me, though IANAL of course.)
That's the point of the GPL -- it's constructed on top of copyright law, which is a rather solid foundation.
So a court case wouldn't directly confirm the validity of the GPL. (The defendant would still be up a certain creek even if the GPL happened to be invalid.) Still, it could certainly improve public perception of it, which would be no bad thing.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Demonizing the RIAA with more vague accusations doesn't advance your position.
Sued any 12 year-olds lately? how about dead people?
The RIAA don't need us to demonize them, they do a great job themselves.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
2005-03-30 00:00:14 PearPC Authors Need Funds To Sue CherryOS Maker (Apple,OS X) (rejected)
oh well, apparently the article *was* deemed newsworthy after all!
Aborigines don't distinguish between work and play, in fact they use exactly the same work to describe both activities. It could be argued that both activities are in themselves creative and artistic. Many other more 'primitive' cultures have the same kind of practices, practices that have been going on for thousands of years without a single penny changing hands. That's a full time job, for many cultures for thousands of years with everyone making a living from it.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The lawyer.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I don't see why that's relevant. Furthermore I don't see why the law has to be constructed so that any one activity must be profitable enough to make a living. If your goal is to provide living wages for people why just concentrate on the creative class? Why not make it so that all activites are controlled by artificial monopolies so that everybody can make a living doing it.
Anyway inability to make a living at it hasn't stopped great art. Picasso died a poor man and so did thousands of other great artists and musicians. Sure britney spears is rich but charlie parker died destitute. Maybe something wrong with this picture.
evil is as evil does
I'll bite. Repackaging an open source project to sell is fine, subject basically to several conditions: 1. You make the source code available (I don't know if that's happened here or not). 2. You keep all the original credits for code already written. They are trying to pass it off as their own original work, which is not OK. 3. Anyone who buys it also must agree and abide by the GPL. They're trying to sell it under a different and propietary license. You can't do that either. So, since the company in question refuses to change their violating practices, the developers must sue them. As is the American way, unfortunately.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
Last time I checked the filesharing people don't
a) Falsely claim to be the copyright holders on the music they are distributing
b) Redistribute for money
Both of these things are far more serious than just simply making illegal copies.
Does this software actually perform? In the release notes, the previous update claims perfermance increases of 300%. Has anyone actually tested the latest release of COS to see how it compares to PPC?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to buy a copy of this ripoff, I'm just wondering if they're actually improving on the design, or if it's all just a bunch of hot air.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
But if copyright law didn't exist CherryOS still wouldn't have to release their changes back to the community... Unless you actually broken into their machines and took the modified source code back off them.
-- You're too stupid to be an atheist.
The money argument seems backwards to me... Amount PearPC developer earns if I download PearPC: $0 Amount PearPC developer earns if I buy CherryOS: $0 Amount artist earns if I buy CD: >$0 Amount artist earns if I download mp3: $0 The PearPC guys will get exactly the same amount of money either way, but if you download the music over P2P the artist will get less money than if you purchased it.
-- You're too stupid to be an atheist.
I myself don't have a problem with the RIAA going after people who share music illegally.
What I have a problem with is the RIAA going after people who make technology available that has legitimate uses in addition to illegal uses and insisting on DRM crap that limits how I can listen to music I paid for.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
You miss the point completely.
I have owned hundreds of CD (maybe close to a thousand). I overpaid for each and every one due to price fixing by the labels. Furthermore I have many CDs which I bought just to get one friggin song because the labels refused to sell me the song I wanted without paying for the filler crap songs.
I resent all that and I am not alone. Now I don't listen to music all that much anymore nor do I buy as many CDs. I think I might have downloaded less then five songs in all my life but you know what I don't feel guilty about it in the least.
So listen carefully. I am not saying that the RIAA is stealing from the artists, I am saying they ripped me off for decades. Boycotting them now is fine and dandy but it does not undo the thousands of dollars they ripped off from me.
If I kicked a dog I would feel guilty. If I passed a homeless person and not given him a quarter I would feel guilty, if I stole something from my neighbor or somebody across town I would feel guilty. I don't feel guilty about downloading songs. To me they are criminals and are indistinguishable from organized crime.
evil is as evil does
1) Create succesfull and interesting niche product (and asociate it with Apple, that's cool)m ydear!
2) Create a little company that will simulate stealing your code, fucking the brains of innocent Americanicans and even better - tie it with the GPL.
3) Start media campaign about how they are stealing your code, etc. Free publicity, etc.
4) Sell the "stolen" code from within the other company, small, but profit.
5) Yell "Think of the Children!^W GPL!!!" and open donations fund.
6) Collect $$$, close that other company, make everyone happy.
7) Gettoutajailfreeandwithsmallshitloadofagreentacos
What you need, people, is an Independent Copyright Holders Union (or such).
So that GPL is enforced, small proprietary companies (like Opera, TrollTech) can stand software patent suits, writers get published without slavery contracts, musicians get listened to online and paid, and finally RIAA gets squashed by competition from those (or evolves).
It's not that hard to get a legal team, a typography, a few record studios and a heap of internet servers (and maybe even a TV channel) if there are millions of people connected and donating/paying for membership.
There are organisations like that in separate areas, but they don't seem to be strong enough yet. What if they join?
Oh yeah, I'm an optimist...
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
yes, look two posts up or goto memestreams.net and search for CherryOS, I decrypted (unpacked) CherryOS.exe (because they had it run through something to basically obfuscate the binary in a retarded attempt to stop this) and then I did a function by function comparison, its pretty much identical...but don't take my word for it, check out the post...
OTOH, I'd be happy to sell you some CDs that are legally mine to resell, but that I did not author.
Why are you modding my parent comment down? I am the AltiVec Developer for PearPC, I am the one collecting the donations, I am the one who's webserver was crushed by the slashdotting.
If you do not believe me, check the address that I put in my comment: krach42@gmail.com
Now, go to the pearpc-devel mailing list (hosted by sourceforge) and look for any emails sent out by krach42@gmail.com
If you keep looking hard enough, you might just see that I am, who I say I am, and not some troll who's trying to get you to donate money to PearPC, when you're actually not.
GOD! Will you Mods put the crack pipe away and actually REFERENCE some information before you act upon it?
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
I doubt that the PearPC people really need to do any karma-whoring amongst the computerati (a PowerPC emulator is a worthwhile concept in itself), but corporate PR departments should always be on the lookout for places where they can line up some good PR.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
It isn't stealing either. It is copyright infringement. That is where you violate copyright law by making copies without authorization of the copyright holder.
I can't afford a sig!
Call me a stickler but its a good idea to be aware that acronyms are unique, and one acronym can have different meaning in different contexts. Here are two examples of the meaning of MAC from a military perspective:I STORY%20UNITS%20COMMANDS%20MAC.htm
o ms/mac.html
MILITARY AIR COMMAND (MAC) - for an example see this url - http://www.mcchordairmuseum.org/REV%20B%20OUR%20H
Military Airlift Command(MAC) -
http://www.zianet.com/jpage/airforce/history/majc
I can't afford a sig!