CherryOS On Hold

aberkvam writes "MacWorld is reporting that CherryOS is "On Hold - until further notice." Does this mean that they are going to confirm that they used PearPC's code or is this just a delaying tactic due to the potentially pending lawsuit? Slashdot has covered this saga before."

Comments

Re:Big surprise... feh

[NetNifty]

" By the way, what does this have to do with Apple? They're both PowerPC emulators, the fact that it will run OSX is incidental."

Correct, however CherryOS specifically says on their web site that it is there in order to run OSX on x86 hardware. PearPC gives instructions on how to run OSX but doesn't really claim that it's whole purpose is to do so, which CherryOS does.

Confirm?

[Rightcoast]

I thought Netsniper already did that for them? http://www.ht-technology.com/cherryos-pearpc/cherr yos-pearpc.html

Re:Deserve

[Anonymous Coward]

Stole? Don't you mean copyright infringed?
As I understand it, the original developers were not deprived of their source - thus nothing was acutally "stolen"?

Cherry OS Press Contact

[Anonymous Coward]

From a former press release: Jim Kartes, 866-661-5699 jim@vx30.com From VX30.com: Maui X-Stream, Inc. 1068 Limahana Pl Suite #5 Lahaina Hi, USA 96761 Phone: 1 (808) 661-5699 Fax: 1 (808) 667-7002

Re:Was there ever any doubt?

[over_exposed]

The problem is, CherryOS denies that they use and GPL'd code and don't give the original authors (PearPC as I understand it) credit for their work.

VX30

[eventhorizon5]

You also have to remember that this company's primary product, the VX30 video codec system, has been suspected (and somewhat proved) to have taken code from other open source projects too - they admitted to taking code from JOrbis (and they're still in violation of the LGPL with that), and it's suspected that they also used XVid and maybe LAME.

My whole info archive (with demo releases of CherryOS, VX30, etc) are all at
http://www.tliquest.net/ryan/cherryos

-eventhorizon

Re:VX30

[eventhorizon5]

Also a third product they have called PdfConv (hosted on their one-product "store" at http://www.mbloom.com/) was entirely taken from VeryPDF's PDF2HTML code, and some effort by PearPC developers was required to make MXS release the source for that. The problem though was that the source they released was entirely stripped of all VeryPDF's copyrights and authorship acknowledgements, and only contained one small reference to them on the webpage (just referencing "VeryPDF" - no links or anything). So even their source is in violation with the GPL (since all previous copyrights must remain intact) - I think they also stripped the XPdf copyrights (VeryPDF's PDF2HTML was based on XPdf).

I found only one reference in the code to verypdf:

---
ryan@europa:/data/home/ryan/xpdf$ grep -ir verypdf pdfconv
pdfconv/src/MyReg.cpp: "Dear verypdf.com Inc:%0a"
---

Here's the diff file I made between VeryPDF's PDF2HTML code and Arben's PdfConv source:
http://www.tliquest.net/ryan/cherryos/other/pdfcon v.patch
That diff is proof enough. So with the way they treat the GPL, it seems as if everything they make is dirty.

-eventhorizon

Re:VX30

[eventhorizon5]

VX30 has XVid code in it. I'm analyzing a memory dump of VX30's encoder demo app (the program's been packed using Petite. I'm about to upload screenshots of it, and also the memory dump itself (I'll analyze the second app too fairly soon) - the dump is 90mb and I'll try to compress it as much as I can.
The new stuff will be in http://www.tliquest.net/ryan/cherryos/vx30/ in a few minutes.

-eventhorizon

Re:Why does this scam get so much coverage?

[ArbitraryConstant]

"which IIRC due to the alvitec unit makes pretty much impossible"

It's mostly because PowerPC has more registers.

An x86 emulating PowerPC must supplement its limited supply of registers with memory, which is really slow even though it happens mostly in L1 cache. Emulating x86 on PowerPC is easier because PowerPC has enough registers to emulate all of the x86 registers without touching memory.

Altivec emulation sucks, but it's not the primary suckage.

Re:Was there ever any doubt?

[Knights who say 'INT]

You can emulate older Macs on a relatively ancient PC very very very well. I used to run a Macintosh Quadra emu on my K6-II/500 before I got an actual Mac -- and I might have gone Mac because of it.

The only piece of the puzzle that's illegal is getting the boot code ROM. If you actually own a Macintosh Quadra, you can rip it and be done with illegally. Or you can hunt around for pir8z0rz, being a (here comes flamebait) a thief :-P

Re:Big surprise... feh

[joe user jr]

From reading some of the posts at PearPC forum CherryOS thread, the developers' lawyers have been in touch and CherryOS has not only been withdrawn, but the company are offering refunds to customers requesting them.

One post quotes a letter from them:

We are currently evaluating a number of issues with the product [CherryOS]. Unfortunately at this time we have another important requirement with a different product. Since we cannot fix CherryOS right now we've decided to take it off the shelves.

Should you require a refund we would be more then happy to obligate you.

That might also fit the scenario of limiting legal exposure and/or acting in response to legal approaches made on behalf of the PearPC developers.