CherryOS Mac Emulator Resurfaces 574
Clash writes "Following its initial announcement and subsequent controversy last October, Mac emulator CherryOS has finally been released. Its creator, Arben Kryeziu, found himself in hot water last year amid claims the software was simply stolen from the open source PearPC project. With the code now under public scrutiny, it appears that such allegations are true. According to BetaNews, CherryOS boots up in the exact same manner as PearPC, and its error messages and source files are nearly identical. The emulator also includes MacOnLinuxVideo, which is the same driver used by PearPC to speed up graphics. The CherryOS configuration file also closely mirrors that used by PearPC. Trial download without registration found here."
Intellectual Property? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wondering how developers feel about this (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is that BSD developers are beyond that and the lack of ego is codified into the license. Its a much more 'mature' license in some ways.
As such, you can't 'rip off' BSD applications as long as you leave the copyright files alone. You don't even have to display them, you have to leave the credits in there somewhere and we are happy.
This post is licensed under the BSD. I'd prefer that you kept it under BSD, but if you want to edit it and take credit for it, feel free to do so.
Re:why would it be illegial? (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how you feel about Intelectual property , This is immoral , unethical and illegal and rightly so
Re:Wondering how developers feel about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me quote something...
Which means that they'd still have to credit you.
Re:So what? He's just forked a GPL project. (Score:5, Insightful)
(He should have supplied the License allong with the binary)
Jeroen
It wasn't stolen (Score:2, Insightful)
For people who believe in sharing, GPL zealots are incredibly possesive about intellectual property.
Re:So what? He's just forked a GPL project. (Score:2, Insightful)
He didn't enhance the product in any way, he just renamed it.
Re:why would it be illegial? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes you can sell it under another name and ask a billion for it... But you still have to acknowledge that there is GPL code in it and have to supply the source code upon request.
Jeroen
Enforce the GPL or it loses relevance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:why would it be illegial? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't do that, you are violating the GPL and asking to be sued.
If you follow the GPL, others can re-distribute YOUR program which will limit the price you can charge without being undercut by others. Linux distributions are a good example for this:
Companies like Novell/SuSE can get away with charging up to 100 Euros for a nice package of installation disks, manuals and some installation support. But you won't find a 1000 Euro distribution without some proprietary software add-ons or extended support included.
As opposed to the server versions of Windows, where the OS alone may cost some thousand dollars.
Re:So what? He's just forked a GPL project. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's where you're wrong not only for the OBVIOUS reason "if you fork a GPL software it must remain GPL" (and I just downloaded the installer and afaik the code IS NOT distributed along), but also because he denied having forked PearPC, where the GPL forces to keep the copyleft of the original authors (ok you can still say "it's my software I coded it all alone last saturday" and let the copyleft in the code, but then everybody can read it if it's GPL'd, so I think giving credit to the legitimate authors is something that the GPL implies)
Even if the PearPC licence had been more permissive (MIT or BSD style), he would still be a moron who cannot even admit he just took the code.
In the current case however, he's just a thief and I hope the PearPC developpers will get some support to sue and get the GPL tested in an US court.
Re:Deal with it (Score:4, Insightful)
Intellectual property? Test the GPL? (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be pretty obvious that this guy will have legal action taken against him at any moment. He has no reputation as a business owner that I can tell so he has nothing to lose. But this case would have interesting value to those businesses out there who have and who would use GPL code in their stuff. I don't think I'm being paranoid or dramatic when I suggest the possibility is there. After all, isn't it Microsoft that ultimately funded SCO's legal machine? Or at least partly?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and I know that no one could disagree with that.
Re:GPL (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It wasn't stolen (Score:5, Insightful)
It really is all about protecting our ability to keep software evolving... not about ego boosts.
Re:It wasn't stolen (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no such a thing as "intellectual property".
Anyhow, it violates the GPL, so it's unethical and a breach of the license they were handed. So they don't have the right to distributed the GPLed code.
Unauthorized distribution.
Theft of identity, maybe, they say they are the authors, and they arent.
Stolen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wondering how developers feel about this (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a risk, it's the point of BSD licensing. Just because "the community" flies into a rage about "taking from 'us' and not giving anything back" doesn't mean the developers feel that way. Why do you think they decided to use those licensing terms?
Re:It wasn't stolen (Score:2, Insightful)
You're missing the point. There is a kind of "theft" occurring, but what is being "stolen" is not the original Pear OS code, but the Cherry OS modifications to the Pear OS code.
According to the GPL, if you take GPLed code and modify it, if you distribute it, you must do so under the GPL licence. In other words, any changes to GPL code that you release must be added to the pool of the world's GPL code. If you release a modification of GPLed code without releasing the source code, you are thus "stealing" resources from that pool, and from the open source community.
This is the entire point of the GPL, and what distinguishes it from the public domain and the BSD licences.
I have used inverted commas because the theft metaphor has been so frequently misused, and become so loaded with illogical connotations, that I don't think its use should be encouraged.
Re:I like your reasoning. (Score:2, Insightful)
As to whether CherryOS is illegal or not - Well, the only way to determine this is to acquire a copy and check for violations of the GPL.
Re:Blah Blah Blah or shuld that be halB labB lahB (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea behind patents is:
1) Work hard or some novel idea
2) Get it to work.
3) Patent it and start selling it without anybody in the way.
4) Profit!!! - for funding more research on more novel ideas.
How it actually works is:
1) Find some obvious thing nobody thought to patent because it's so blatantly obvious
2) Patent it. Getting it to work is optional.
3) Wait till a bunch of people use it, then sue them.
4) Profit!!! - for funding more lawyers.
Copyright is similarly screwed up, though in most cases significantly higher degree of creativity is needed. Copyrighting silence, copyrighting a single black dot isn't as notorious as patenting triple click. Although in the Trademark field things are VERY screwed up. (site Mobil-X shut down because it's too similar to "Asterix" ????)
Re:Stolen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes we can. "We" are the several hundred thousand slashdot readers, not some hivemind, and people might use words differently. Now, if you could find a single person being inconsistent you'd be welcome to attack.
Re:Stolen? (Score:3, Insightful)
When someone has intelectual property, they own the rights to it, they get the soul ability to control distribution, claim authorship and other rights.
If someone makes a copy of it, they breech the distribution rights of the original author, however they do not take any of of those parts of the intelectual property. The property is the rights over the data, not the data itself. Only the data is copied, the rights stay where they are and no rights are falsely claimed by the person who copied it.
However when they modify it, rebrand it and repackage it they are claiming those rights that are in effect the intelectual property. They are claiming distribution rights and claiming authorship.
What would be equivilant is taking a good, but little known song, then putting it onto a CD and claiming that it is mine. That way the author gets neither the credit for the song, nor the control over how the song is distributed. It doesn't allow the songwriter to disallow the song from being used in ways that they would find offensive to their work, (such as in an album with Achy Breaky Heart and the McCartney/Wonder rendition of Ebony and Ivory) or contrary to their morals (such as in a hardcore fetish porn film).
I don't pretend to advocate piracy. Control of distribution (such as through the GPL or other agreements) is part of the core of interlectual property rights. But it is a FAR cry from doing what these people did with someone elses software.
Re:Wondering how developers feel about this (Score:3, Insightful)
If they cared they wouldn't have used a licence which allowed it, so your question makes no sense.
Put another way, it wouldn't have been `ripped off' but `used as intended'.
Re:why would it be illegial? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It wasn't stolen (Score:3, Insightful)
But wait, I'm confused. I thought "theft" was actually depriving someone else of the use of something by taking it. I mean, that's why everyone says downloading music isn't stealing, right? So this shouldn't be stealing either. Or is it only theft when it applies to the GPL?
Yes Stolen (Score:2, Insightful)
What CherryOS did was beyond this. They pretended that someone elses "music" was their own and sold it as their own. That's plagiarizing which has been frowned upon since people put pen to paper.
Yes. It's stealing and no there is no conflict.
Re:Intellectual Property? (Score:4, Insightful)
From my point of view, copyright is good if it is limited, both in time and in scope.
If I write a book, an essay, a piece of software, or if I create some nice pictures or music, then I don't want to have my work copied by others unless I allow them to do so (the GPL or the Creative Commons licenses are ways to allow that under some conditions).
I think that it is reasonable to allow authors to protect their original works for a limited amount of time. Most authors expect some kind of tangible or intangible benefits when they publish their works. Copying without permission may deprive them from these benefits, so it is good to have some copyright laws protecting the authors.
However, these laws should allow fair use and should include a reasonable time limit. By "fair use", I mean having the right to make personal copies (including conversion to other formats - for example converting music or video to Ogg Vorbis or Theora) or to distribute short excerpts of the works. Note that "fair use" does not include distributing copies to your neighbors or to anybody else via the Internet.
Re:Um. (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's why (Score:3, Insightful)
Because copyrights are healthy and patents, particularly patents on intangibles like software, are unhealthy. They're both artificial constructions of law, but their effects on people are quite different.
Your question is a bit like asking: This looks very like one of the food threads that run here regularly, but with everyone on the other side of the line. If fresh fruit & veg is so right, why are McDonalds burgers so wrong?
Copyrights promote creativity and competition. Patents punish creativity and competition. (And intangibles patents are worse as they also attack the basic human right of self-expression.)
-- Jamie
Re:MOD TROLL DOWN PLEASE (Score:4, Insightful)
All he is stating is the fact that apple didnt rip off xerox and that the grandparent is obviously a bad troll
if you want to read about the Xerox GUI and the money apple paid to study it and improvments that were made by apple enginers to the design then a quick google search on the topic will help enlighten
Re:Intellectual Property? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why would it be illegial? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a _huge_ difference between code reuse and stealing code. If this guy simply was trying to sell CherryOS (really just the GPLed PearPC) but he kept it as a GPLed work, there would be no legal problems for him.
WAIT A MINUTE (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual, in CherryOS articles, copyright infringement of GPL code mysteriously becomes theft. In P2P piracy articles, copyright infringement mysteriously becomes an okay natural culture movement.
You can't claim BSD licensed code is yours either! (Score:3, Insightful)
You most certainly cannot use someone elses code under the BSD license and pretend you wrote it, which is what's happened in this case.
If Pear had been released under the BSD license, the 'developers' of CherryOS would still be in violation of the license by claming they wrote it and that it's an origional work.
If you don't care if someone takes your work and gets full credit for it, then there is no point in licensing it under the BSD license, just release it as Public Domain and be done with it, but it's rather implausible to claim that those who release code under the BSD license don't care about getting credit when that's the one big restriction it has.
Just like piracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm confused about the
do you work for sco? (Score:2, Insightful)
this is sco's ladder theory and it is incorrect. if the final code does not contain any of the original work, it is not "derived." there are standard tests for code comparison [eg the abstraction, filtration comparison test]. it does help your defence in court though to clean room the development in case of any accidental code similarities.
"Although I am not sure if Linux should be known as a derived work of Minix."
it is not. linus built it on a "framework" of minix. in other words, the computer he used for the coding process ran minix. other than that they are not the same os. minix is a microkernel os and linux uses a monolithic kernel. even ast [creator of minix] agrees that linux is not derived from minix. it is a new, posix compliant operating sytem.
sum.zero
Yup, just like piracy. (Score:3, Insightful)
The sane position, though, is this:
CherryOS isn't stolen code, because copyright infringement and theft are two different things. It does, however, contain code which is illegally distributed without a license (since the auther fails to accept and follow the terms of the GPL), hence its authors are evil bastards.
hahah... ooook... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Intellectual Property? (Score:1, Insightful)
How Much Justice Can You Afford? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody in the tech world seems to grasp that defending your legal rights costs money. Every time Slashdot does a story about another round of Cease and Desist letters [webtechniques.com], we get a ton of posts saying, in effect, "That's obviously lame, people should just ignore them." But the sad fact is, you don't know how lame any legal action is until you've gotten legal advice. Nor can you take legal action without that overpaid guy in the suit.
Well, if you're very smart and very patient, you can represent yourself in Small Claims Court. But that's not applicable to this kind of issue.
Re:WAIT A MINUTE (Score:3, Insightful)