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OS X Operating Systems Software Your Rights Online

Finding the Pits In CherryOS 494

Posted by timothy from the light-the-bombeck-beacon dept.
An anonymous reader writes "DrunkenBlog is carrying a story with piles of gathered evidence (including screenshots of code diffs) exposing the speed claims of CherryOS, and that the company behind it (Maui X-Stream) is not only stealing code from the open source project PearPC but at least several other OSS projects too. There are some choice quotes from PearPC developers on how it is harming their project. They appear to have a strong case, but enforcing the GPL could take help."
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Finding the Pits In CherryOS More

Finding the Pits In CherryOS

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  • Warez too! (Score:5, Informative)

    by sH4RD ( 749216 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:22PM (#11921484) Homepage
    According to this thread [serverkompetenz.net] on PearPC.net, he is using a warez'd copy of several programs as well.

  • Mirror (Score:3, Informative)

    by Joey Patterson ( 547891 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:24PM (#11921500)
    The DrunkenBlog site is very slow, so here's a MirrorDot mirror [mirrordot.org] of it.

  • already slow... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Neophytus ( 642863 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:25PM (#11921508)
    Article through coral [nyud.net]

    Article through mirrordot [mirrordot.org]

  • Copyright infringement is NOT THEFT! (Score:5, Informative)

    by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:29PM (#11921538) Journal
    It is copyright infringement, just like the subject says.

    It does not matter who's copyright is being infringed or who is claiming it, it is STILL NOT THEFT.

    I'll bet I'll be modded down now, since this sort of thing is only accepable on an anti *AA thread.

  • "Troll"??? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:32PM (#11921563) Homepage
    "Troll"??? It's not a troll. And it's not a condemnation of GPL either. It's a truthful statement that most FOSS developers can't afford to sue people.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:4, Informative)

    by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:32PM (#11921566) Journal
    The sad truth is that the GPL has no real teeth, because most of the people writing GPL'd code do not have the resources or time to do anything about "code theft".
    --
    What's worth doing is worth doing for money...

    That does not mean the license has no teeth, just like many other civil laws: you have to have the money to go to court.

    Oh and regarding your .sig: does that apply to sex too?

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:34PM (#11921578)
    If it is possible to sue for ?damages? then I'm sure at least one geak who is a lawyer would like to take a stab at it.

    Remember when the SCO lawsuits began? For those old enough to remember that far back, that gives an indication of how long a lawsuit can take and still have no end in sight. In fact they can take a lot longer. And they cost money that whole time. What you need is not a geek with a lawyer, but an unbelievably wealthy geek with a lawyer - and I don't think Bill G will be stepping up to the plate for this one.

  • Re:Steal or Copy? (Score:3, Informative)

    by NetNifty ( 796376 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:44PM (#11921633) Homepage
    IIRC the GPL says you can charge whatever you want for the binary, but you have to release the source code which you used in it (ie make it available, at the very least by including the LICENCE.txt in the main directory of the software) and release it under the GPL licence. CherryOS has not done this.

  • Re:Grab zagrabyonnoye (Score:2, Informative)

    by RdsArts ( 667685 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @04:47PM (#11921655) Homepage Journal
    Cherry-OS is a PPC emulator. If someone runs Mac OS X in "violation" of some EULA, that's the user's problem. Many have used it to, for example, test out PPC Linux distros.

    Furthermore, no one with half a brain would say that software someone bought and then used on something other than the exact hardware someone else wanted them to is "stealing." That's just daft double-speak.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:4, Informative)

    by jacksonj04 ( 800021 ) <nick@nickjackson.me> on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:03PM (#11921767) Homepage
    I would say it depends on how the phones work. If all they are is a basic kernel with the companies own proprietary binaries on top, then there's nothing the company has to distribute. The kernel is available, it's their own binaries which make it special.

    Remember - as long as it's not a modification of or using parts of GPL code, then you can do what you like with it.

  • Yes, first, click-through EULA's are iffy anyway, and second, if you can extract the data from the SETUP.EXE program, you can do anything, since their site allows downloads without accepting the EULA [slashdot.org]!

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:25PM (#11921927)
    No, they have to make the source of the kernel they use available to anyone who has the binary (ie an owner of the phone). Just saying "it's stock 2.4.2, get it from kernel.org" isn't good enough, they have to make it available themselves.

    You are correct that they don't have to give out the source to their own binaries, as long as they're not GPLed or derived from GPLed software.

  • Re:Is Pear allowed to... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Mycroft_VIII ( 572950 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:26PM (#11921932) Journal
    You need an actual lawyer to answer this clearly. But I seem to recall that if said decompiling and so on shows the code to belong to the pear people, cherryos people have no standing to limit what they do to it.
    It's like I own a car, but you claim it's yours so I prove it's mine by starting it with my chipped key and comparing the vin number to sales records then you trying to have me jailed for using your car w/o permision.
    There's also something about the fact that cherry os people are doing something illeagle here and since thier hands are dirty they don't really have any recourse to ask the courts to protect it or something like that.
    Like I said a real lawyer could probably explain/clarify my what I vaguely remember here, or even show whether it made leagle sense (even though it makes common sense to me).

    Mycroft

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:5, Informative)

    by dominator ( 61418 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:28PM (#11921949) Homepage
    That's not true at all. I've hashed it out with a few corporations over wvWare [sf.net], my MSWord reading library. Usually the threat of action is enough to have the infringers quaking in their boots, and coax them into complaince. When it's not enough, you've got the FSF all-too willing to come to your aide:

    http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-violatio n.html [fsf.org]

    Regarding these cases, Eben Moglen (the FSF's general legal counsel) once told me that the reason you've never seen a GPL violation case go to court is because it's always a slam-dunk case that will be decided in your favor; that it's always in the infringer's best interest to settle out of court. I don't know how self-serving that statement was, but it's worth pondering at least. It's been my experience, in any case.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:3, Informative)

    by slux ( 632202 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:28PM (#11921954)
    Luckily, we now have the Software Freedom Law Center [softwarefreedom.org].

    FSF has also been taking action against GPL infringers for a long time now AFAIK.

    Some infringers do get away with it, one such case was a proprietary messenger application misappropriating Psi's [affinix.com] code, but the defense is available if the developers are willing. Another sad case for me are the Linux kernel binary-only modules which apparently aren't perfectly legal either, yet I myself have a D-Link router that contains several. No-one is sure what the court would find on those, though.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:2, Informative)

    by FlashBuster3000 ( 319616 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:31PM (#11921971) Homepage
    Yeah, but after the netfilter vs. sitecom case the GPL proved as legal in real life.
    see http://www.netfilter.org/news/2004-04-15-sitecom-g pl.html [netfilter.org]

  • All tell the CherryOS authors how nice they are... (Score:3, Informative)

    by rbarreira ( 836272 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:34PM (#11921992) Homepage
    Why don't we all send a nice letter to the makers of CherryOS? Here are some email addresses:

    mail@cherryos.com; press@cherryos.com; info@mxsinc.com; arben@vx30.com; vx30@mauionline.com

    I was thinking of posting this anonymously, but I didn't. Feel free to mod me as troll or anything else you want, but before that just think - how would you react if they were doing this to your own software project?

    A nice letter is not as much as those guys deserve... They are scammers and deserve to be trusted as such.

  • Re:Warez too! (Score:2, Informative)

    by tyleroar ( 614054 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:36PM (#11922020) Homepage
    Actually, the thread doesn't say he is using several warez programs. They say he is using ONE warez program. Plus, some guy saying the installer he used was warezed, doesn't really make it true.

  • Re:Stealing code? (Score:2, Informative)

    by madaxe42 ( 690151 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:40PM (#11922046) Homepage
    They're not code diffs, and they haven't released any code - they're diffs of hex dumps of libraries and executables - a lot of strings remain human readable - play around with a hex editor a bit, or use 'strings' in unix.

  • Re:Hypocrisy.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by spaeschke ( 774948 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:48PM (#11922100)
    Possibly not... A case could be made that PearPC merely emulates the PPC, and isn't specifically made to run OSX. Hell, you could probably run YellowDog on it if you wanted to.

    Of course, we all know that's not the true purpose behind PearPC, but they could win on a technicality.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:2, Informative)

    by zotz ( 3951 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:49PM (#11922107) Homepage Journal
    "No, they have to make the source of the kernel they use available to anyone who has the binary"

    Actually, according to 3b,

    "b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange;"

    they have to provide the source to any third party, not just people who have the binary.

    Assuming they are not giving the phones away. If they are, they may get by with 3c.

    all the best,

    drew

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tomjen ( 839882 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @05:54PM (#11922141)
    No you need assitance from the GNU foundation - they have the lawyers (two law professors if i am not mistaken) and they would like to fry that company - then everybody would fear and respect the GPL.

  • Not everybody knows (Score:5, Informative)

    by Craig Ringer ( 302899 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:12PM (#11922247) Homepage Journal
    That's the issue. Not everybody knows. I saw a post on the local Mac user group list (I support macs at work so I need to keep track) about CherryOS. They had no idea of the issues involved and the article they referred to did not mention them.

    It's worth making some noise even about something this blatant.

  • Re:Hypocrisy.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:27PM (#11922333) Homepage Journal
    Thats bollocks!
    PearPC - While able to run OSX - it is simply an emulation of PPC hardware. There are plenty of operating systems that PearPC can run eg: linux, bsd , beos etc. It is upto the person running the emulator whether they violate apples licensing agreement.

    Cherry OS however - albeit the same thing as PearPC are explicitly advertising their (stolen) product for the purpose of running OSX. They are much more likely to find themselves on the end of an apple lawsuit than the PearPC developers.

  • Re:Why does CherryOS even bother? (Score:4, Informative)

    by northcat ( 827059 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:41PM (#11922397) Journal
    Everyone already knows that their project was a ripoff of PearPC

    Correction: Everyone on Slashdot and the PearPC forums.

  • Re:Hypocrisy.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:43PM (#11922412) Homepage
    Even though Apple Computer could sue your ass off because they have a clause in their EULA disallowing it, it's a really stupid clause

    Yes, it is a really stupid clause, because it's an "illegal tie-in sale". IBM lost that one decades ago, trying to prevent clones of their mainframes. That's how the third-party IBM mainframe market was created.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday March 12, 2005 @07:42PM (#11922783) Homepage Journal
    FSF does not own copyrights on the Linux kernel, and I don't know of anyone who has come to FSF who does own such copyrights. But we now have the resources to pursue such matters outside of FSF. I would like to hear from kernel copyright holders who would help with that. If we let the unauthorized derivative works go on for too long, I'm afraid we will create an estoppel that would limit the effect of the GPL.

    Bruce

  • Why not do something about this? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Amich ( 542141 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @07:51PM (#11922816)
    It's obvious this sort of thing is an outrage, and we should stand up and do something better than preaching to the choir on Slashdot.

    This story made me decide to donate to the PearPC project http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=1 08675 [sourceforge.net] . I'm sure if enough donations piled up, PearPC's authors would go after CherryOS in court.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:3, Informative)

    by KarmaMB84 ( 743001 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @08:41PM (#11923042)
    They have to make it available upon request, but I don't see anyone getting upset and taking them to court when they tell them the exact source for the underlying OS is available at kernel.org. If it becomes unavailable at kernel.org, then they'd have to either start mailing it on physical media to people who request it or link them to their own FTP (possibly even with a one time username/password) for it or something similar. It would be incredibly stupid for the OSS community to force anyone distributing binaries made from vanilla sources to become a mirror for the source.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:4, Informative)

    by shellbeach ( 610559 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @09:54PM (#11923427)
    Actually, according to 3b ... they have to provide the source to any third party, not just people who have the binary.

    This is incorrect. Read section 3 in context ...

    Quoting from http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html [gnu.org]:

    • 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

      a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

      b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

      c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

      [My emphasis]


    Thus you only have to comply with one of either (a), (b) or (c) and it is perfectly legitimate to sell GPL software and only provide the source with the purchased binary (thereby meeting the requirements of section a). Mind you, anyone who buys it can then quite happily make it available for free download if they want ...

  • Someone please mod this troll DOWN (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12, 2005 @09:56PM (#11923434)
    This is an obvious troll from a known hypocrite and copyright infringer [slashdot.org]

    Please mod him down.

  • Re:The sad truth... (Score:3, Informative)

    by shellbeach ( 610559 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @08:31PM (#11928991)
    Sure, but in context of the thread, they have purchased the router, and thus have the binary and have not been supplied with the source. Therefore, a is out and that leaves b and c for consideration.

    Sorry :( - I thought you were talking in general terms: the idea that the author of GPL'd software has to make the source available to everyone on the internet is a common misconception. So as far as those linux phones go, you're right - the manufacturers should be providing the source of the kernel they're using or a link to that source.

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