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CherryOS On Hold

Posted by Zonk on Tue Apr 05, 2005 04:51 PM
from the ripening-later-this-year dept.
Businesses OS X Operating Systems Apple
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."
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  • Big surprise... feh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SoTuA (683507) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:53PM (#12148296)
    Maybe holding the release because a sold copy of CherryOS would give PearPC's lawyers ammo for bigger damages?

    • Re:Big surprise... feh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:55PM (#12148323)
      I bet it's more along the lines of "We got caught with our pants down, again... quick, let's change more identifiable code slightly to evade them!"

      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.

      • Re:Big surprise... feh (Score:5, Informative)

        by NetNifty (796376) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:58PM (#12148363) Homepage
        " 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.

    • Re:Big surprise... feh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bastian (66383)
      Also interesting that they refused to make any sort of comment in the MacWorld article. I don't know the legal system well, but could this be a sign that they know they're in so deep that there's hardly a think they could say that couldn't be used against them in court?

    • Re:Big surprise... feh (Score:5, Informative)

      by joe user jr (230757) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @07:13PM (#12149470)
      From reading some of the posts at PearPC forum CherryOS thread [pearpc.net], the developers' lawyers have been in touch and CherryOS has not only been withdrawn, but the company are offering refunds to customers requesting them.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 [pearpc.net]:

      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.

  • Was there ever any doubt? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pwnage (856708) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:54PM (#12148306)
    So goes the latest twist in the CherryOS saga: the most probable end to clear OSS theft and a massive stint of publicity whoring.

    Which reminds me, if your really want Mac OS, then just get the real thing.

    • Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by M.C. Hampster (541262) <M.C.TheHampster@ ... ail.com minus pi> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:37PM (#12148721) Journal

      So goes the latest twist in the CherryOS saga: the most probable end to clear OSS theft and a massive stint of publicity whoring.

      Waaa, waaa! It's not theft it's copyright infringement. Waaa, waaa!

        • Re:Wait for it... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by M.C. Hampster (541262) <M.C.TheHampster@ ... ail.com minus pi> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @06:19PM (#12149066) Journal

          They are not merely making a copy. They are claiming it as their own creation. Surely you can see the difference.

          There is a difference, but it doesn't mean what they are doing is theft, or that it is anymore theft than making copies of content/software you don't own.

          When one makes the statement that people who copy movies/music/software aren't "stealing" because they are making a copy of existing code and the original content authors are not out anything (because they still have their original copy), they are making the distinction that it only becomes theft if you remove the original from the hands of the owner. In this case, the PearPC guys still have all of their own original code. They aren't "out" anything except possibly for the credit of their original work. How are they "losing" out on anything by the CherryOS guys copying their code? If you say they are out potential revenues from selling their code, then you are acknowledging that the ??AA has a point, aren't you?

          In both cases, people are releasing their intellectual property to the world under certain conditions. In one case, they say you can use the property however you want, you just can't give copies of it to other people. In the other, they say you can use the property however you want, and you can give it to other people, but only if you also do it in it's original form (source code). Both parties have the right to put whatever conditions they wish on redistribution, no?

          • Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by AstroDrabb (534369) * on Tuesday April 05 2005, @07:36PM (#12149615)
            I think you are looking at it wrong. If I took a song/movie/album that I had no rights to and sold it as my work _for_ profit, then yes, the RIAA/MPAA would have a very valid case/point. Now if I took a CD I PURCHASED and ripped it to OGG/MP3 for safe keeping, than IMO the MPAA/RIAA have no case/point. However the RIAA/MPAA _are_ trying to prevent me/you from being able to just backup content I/you legally purchased. I have no problem with the MPAA/RIAA trying to prevent people from doing massive uploading. However, the hole MPAA/RIAA argument doesn't even compare to this issue.

            PearPC is an OPEN product that you can get for free/libre as well as Free/Speech. I can go get the code from PearPC right now and distribute it, change it, etc. There are very little rules wrt the PearPC code. The main rule is that if you modify any of the PearPC code, that new code also must be under the same license. These CherryOS guys are flippin their middle finger at that.

            The only way your MPAA/RIAA argument would be even close would be if the MPAA/RIAA allowed free distribution of _all_ their content and had only the requirement that if someone modified their content, that new content would be covered by the same license. Please, shoot me an email the day the MPAA/RIAA make that policy change!

  • wrong season (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:54PM (#12148314)
    the last i checked, cherry harvest begins in june

    • Re:wrong season (Score:5, Funny)

      by Frac (27516) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @08:48PM (#12150094)
      the last i checked, cherry harvest begins in june

      The last I checked, cherry harvest begins starting spring break, in Cancun and Miami.

  • Why does everything take so damned long? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PornMaster (749461) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:55PM (#12148318) Homepage
    It's frustrating that everything takes so damn long... since it's trivial to show that CherryOS is a rip-off of PearPC, why does this guy still even have a home to sleep in? Justice is too damned slow.

  • You think? (Score:5, Funny)

    by t_allardyce (48447) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:57PM (#12148338) Journal
    Without undermining due process, i think its pretty obvious that they are as guilty as a man with shit on his dick standing stark naked next to a goat.

  • Good! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:58PM (#12148356)
    I'm glad I donated my $5 to PearPC. It's about all I can really afford, and I only use Apple's anyways, but people who put all that effort into source-code like PearPC (which is amazing, by the way), deserve some help when theiving bastards like CherryOS come along. Viva la Open Source!

  • Confirm? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rightcoast (807751) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:58PM (#12148364) Homepage
    I thought Netsniper already did that for them? http://www.ht-technology.com/cherryos-pearpc/cherr yos-pearpc.html [ht-technology.com]

  • Various conspiracy theories... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jd (1658) <[moc.oohay] [ta] [kapimi]> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:59PM (#12148377) Homepage Journal
    • They are planning to buy out PearPC, so that there is nobody left to sue them
    • CherryOS is being developed by the Amiga OS development team
    • Microsoft bought both, the Amiga AND the Vatican
    • Investors pulled out when they realised that Cherry is a really pathetic name - and I'm pretty sure it's already trademarked for some other computer equiptment
    • Both operating systems, all companies involved and the entire case was fabricated by the same UK journalist who invented "toothing"


  • Too bad (Score:3, Funny)

    by Stick_Fig (740331) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @04:59PM (#12148382) Homepage
    Guess they're like a hot virgin at a Star Trek convention, too afraid of a bunch of nerds popping their Cherry.

  • In the page source.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Flaming_cows (798162) * on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:00PM (#12148386)
    There is a date in the page source (which doesn't conform to the stated HTML 4.01 Transitional doctype along with other random attributes given to various elements, by the way):
    <st1:date Month="11" Day="25" Year="2004">
    I wonder what it's there for, as it is nowhere near accurate.

  • Of course its on hold! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:01PM (#12148393)
    ... They are waiting for PearPC to finish up all of the CherryOS promised features first!

    • Re:Of course its on hold! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iCEBaLM (34905) <icebalm@ i c e balm.com> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:10PM (#12148474)
      This is actually quite true. There are non-public and unreleased patches for pearpc which include features for sound, etc. They are unreleased because of the potential for CherryOS to steal them and will continue to be private until such time as the CherryOS threat is negated.

  • Cherry O's (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:01PM (#12148396)
    In other news
    Cherry OS has decided to restructure and rename their company/product, in response to a possible lawsuit.

    Their new name is no Cherry O's, and they well now be selling breakfast cereal.

    Later that day Kellogg's has announced they are seeking to sue Cherry O's claiming that the company "Just slapped a sticker on our boxes of Apple Jacks"

    A Cherry O's spokesman was quoted in saying "I don't know what the problem is, we both use the cereal language."

  • Hope this goes to court (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rve (4436) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:02PM (#12148400)
    It would be an interesting test case to see if the GPL can hold up in court. My guess is that it wouldn't in the real world (money vs. no-money), but the evidence seems to be pretty hard to sweep aside in this particular case.

    • Re:Hope this goes to court (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phoenix.bam! (642635) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:07PM (#12148449)
      The nice thing about the GPL not holding up in court is that all code released under the GPL will not become part of the public domain. Therefore any company trying to profit from GPL code cannot claim the GPL is invalid and use the code. The GPL is the only thing that makes the code legal to distribute.

  • why under an APPLE group/heading (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pbjones (315127) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:08PM (#12148453)
    Why is this under a an APPLE heading? It's Window/Linux/Know your rights/GPL.

    The issue in NOT with the emulation of a PPC systems that can run LINUX too, it is an issue about theft!

  • Why do we care? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jozer99 (693146) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:09PM (#12148471)
    Why does everyone still care? It became incredibly obvious about 2 weeks after the first beta came out that it was simply an alternative GUI for PearPC. Knowing that, people should have stopped paying attention to it except for noting that it is another instance of someone abusing open source code and EULAs. You don't think that they would/could ever release a full version of their product, sell it for money, and live up to the performace claims?
  • I'm trying to run the mac port of Doom3 on OS 10.3.8 under CherryOS running on Virtual PC on OS 9.2.1 running on Pear PC using OS X 10.2.4 under Guest PC running BeOS on my G3 Beige Mac.

    All I'm getting is a black screen. Is there something wrong, or am I playing the game already?

  • Legitimate question: what's the opposing argument? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dejohn (164452) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:19PM (#12148568) Homepage
    There are two sides to every story. It's clear that the Slashdot crows believes the publisher of CherryOS should burn in hell, but what is his story/argument? Surely he didn't think that he could get away with a clear violation of the GPL, claim all ownership and intellectual property of CherryOS, sell it, make millions, and not get anyone suspicious. Is he thinking that he's doing an allowable fork and then selling some slightly modified version with support or something?
    • Surely he didn't think that he could get away with a clear violation of the GPL, claim all ownership and intellectual property of CherryOS, sell it, make millions, and not get anyone suspicious. Why would he not be thinking that? If it's a legitimate fork, he would not be claiming that he wrote it.
      Why do authors plagiarize literature, or painters copy Van Gogh? Because they think they will find customers who don't know the difference, or who don't care.

  • what it might be... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rogabean (741411) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {regniltsiegr}> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:36PM (#12148706) Homepage
    1. They realize now they are not going to get away with it.
    or
    2. They still think they can, but they need more time to hide code. Obviously they didn't do a good enough job. LOL
    or
    3. Lawyers scared them.

    Then again I don't know. I've refocused myself on PearPC and helping with it. I could care less anymore what these monkeys do anymore. Let the lawyers sort this one out.

  • VX30 (Score:5, Informative)

    by eventhorizon5 (533026) <ryan.tliquest@net> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:44PM (#12148778) Homepage
    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 [tliquest.net]

    -eventhorizon

    • Re:VX30 (Score:5, Informative)

      by eventhorizon5 (533026) <ryan.tliquest@net> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @06:09PM (#12148991) Homepage
      Also a third product they have called PdfConv (hosted on their one-product "store" at http://www.mbloom.com/ [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 [tliquest.net]
      That diff is proof enough. So with the way they treat the GPL, it seems as if everything they make is dirty.

      -eventhorizon

    • Re:Deserve (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tomjen (839882) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:01PM (#12148398)
      While i think it is wrong, it must say:
      It is not stealing/piracy/buzzword of the week. It is copyright infrigment.

      • Re:Deserve (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Stevyn (691306) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:11PM (#12148491)
        Yeah, I've seen this issue raised before, however, when I download a song I don't start a record company and try to sell it under my label.

        Yes, both cases are copyright infringement, but I guess "it's worse" when you take code, repackage it, call it your own, deny you stole it, and try to sell it.

          • Plagiarism (Score:5, Insightful)

            by tepples (727027) <<moc.thgienip> <ta> <6002hsals>> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:31PM (#12148668) Homepage Journal

            [Copyright infringement that identifies the author and copyright infringement that does not identify the author are] the same thing ethically speaking.

            Not necessarily. There's copyright infringement (violating a government-granted monopoly), and then there's plagiarism (not identifying the author). European "moral rights" make plagiarism an offence per se, while the United States handles plagiarism under the "passing off" provisions of trademark law and under 17 USC 1202 of copyright law.

        • Re:Deserve (Score:5, Insightful)

          by 91degrees (207121) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @06:12PM (#12149011) Journal
          or whateverelsely

          controversially?
          Arguably?

          Considering the inevitable arguments regarding the fact that the owners still have their software, and are in no way deprived of the use of it, there are many people who disagree.

          Religion doesn't enter into it.

          Morally, morality is a personal thing.

          Practically there's a key difference. The PearPC creators still have their code.

          If you're arguing that it fits your definition of stealing, fine. I'll argue its jaywalking because it fits my definition of jaywalking. But then we might as well be talking different languages.

          The only reason to call it stealing is because the term has negative connotations. How about using a less emotive term?

        • Re:Deserve (Score:5, Insightful)

          by badasscat (563442) <basscadet75NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday April 05 2005, @07:38PM (#12149635) Homepage
          Indeed, I stand corrected. But I figure that difference is only an argument of semantics. Seems pretty much the same thing (in this case) to me.

          It is not even close. Nobody can "steal" GPL'd code - it is there for all to see and modify as they see fit. That's the whole point.

          What you can't do is take that code, modify it, sell the binaries and then refuse to give your contributions back to the community. That is what the CherryOS people have done, and that is a GPL violation. As the copyrighted code is provided under the GPL only under the terms of said GPL, violation of it is by extension a copyright violation.

          But you can't "steal" something that is freely available, so it is not just semantics whether or not it was "theft".

          Yes, it was wrong - that's not the issue. But just as we're constantly berating the RIAA/MPAA for their hyperbole on such issues, we have to be careful in what we say about GPL-related copyright violations too.. especially as this is even further removed from "theft" than what people do when they download music or movies.

    • Re:Why does this scam get so much coverage? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NetNifty (796376) on Tuesday April 05 2005, @05:10PM (#12148481) Homepage
      Probably getting so much coverage because CherryOS made absurb claims first of all (IIRC they claimed G5 emulation at 100% speed, which IIRC due to the alvitec unit makes pretty much impossible), now is so blatently commiting copyright infringement on PearPC's code (IIRC the first clue came from a screenshot of CherryOS' boot screen displaying a line of nonsense text which the PearPC team put in, and binary comparisons on the demo have backed that up), while claiming that they wrote the whole thing and dismissing claims in an absurd way (claiming it was entirely a coinsidence that the text mentioned earlier was the same) and constantly changing their story (IIRC first they said one person did it, then they said a dev had been fired who used GPL code and the code removed, then denied all accusations of GPL code completely).

      Basically it gets so much coverage because it's so unbelievable how stupid they are.

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