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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

CherryOS On Hold 314

Posted by Zonk from the ripening-later-this-year dept.
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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CherryOS On Hold More

CherryOS On Hold

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

    by SoTuA ( 683507 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @05:53PM (#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 @05:55PM (#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 @05:58PM (#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.
      • 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!"

        Unfortunately for them, it's too late now if they've already violated the license. It would be particularly apparent they did this if they changed sepcific obvious bits in their code now. However, at the same time we see a disadvantage with open source code; no one was easily able to sue them. I read about the donations taken, yes, but since then everything wen
    • Maybe it already has sold.... [betanews.com]

    • 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 @08:13PM (#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 @05:54PM (#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.

    • I haven't been following this - can someone explain how CherryOS has gone wrong? I've bought previous products that were commercial wrappers around GPL products - for example a GUI front end to CVS - that had a closed proprietary piece and a GPL peice, distributed with the source for the GPL piece, of course. Of course, perhaps there was no linking between products in that case, just a command line used behind the scenes.

      Couldn't CherryOS just add the source to the PearPC peices to their distro package?

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

      by M.C. Hampster ( 541262 ) <M...C...TheHampster@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:37PM (#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:3, Insightful)

        by bnenning ( 58349 )
        It's not theft it's copyright infringement.

        That's true, although in this case it's also commercial fraud.

  • wrong season (Score:3, Funny)

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

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

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @05:55PM (#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 @05:57PM (#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 @05:58PM (#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 @05:58PM (#12148364) Homepage
    I thought Netsniper already did that for them? http://www.ht-technology.com/cherryos-pearpc/cherr yos-pearpc.html [ht-technology.com]
  • Is it just because there are tonns of people who are dying to get OS X running on their PC, because for various resons (mainly financial) they can't or won't buy a Mac? And, aforementioned crowd is so hot about it that it would hang on lips of any snakeoil vendor promising them just that despite being an obvious fraud?

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

      by NetNifty ( 796376 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:10PM (#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.
    • No, it gets so much coverage because this, being such an obvious violation of the GPL, is probably the first time that the aforementioned GPL is going to get a trial-by-fire in an actual court of law. Thousands of people who've written GPL-protected code are going to be waiting to see if what they've written is actually going to be defended in a US Court of Law in such an obvious case of steal-sell-profit. If it isn't, well then, we're all screwed.

      Any other questions?

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

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @05:59PM (#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"


    • Heheh, you used "cherry" and "pulled out" in the same sentence. You dirty, dirty bird.
    • Here's a conspiracy theory for you:

      Maui software actually was "inspired" by PearPC and hired a Pakistani company to create a similar product. The Pakistani company secretly stole PearPC to deliver the product on time (partly because they had no idea what they were doing) and then Maui compounded the issue by covering the fact that they'd used an overseas company. (They didn't want to drive customers away by admitting that.) So now Maui has a hot (as in stolen) product on their hands, and is trying like hel
      • Thats possible. Its also possible that the pakistani company is a straw man, it may exist and was told to customize pearpc or it may not exist at all.

        I interviewed for a contract position at which the labor was estimated to be about 1000-1500 man hours. 500 machines, each process took 2-3 hours. And yet -- the contract duration was 2 months. It was obvious at the end of the two months either, I would take the blame for not having done the impossible task, or depending on the terms of the contract, I mi

    • | 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 [sic]

      Yeah, no kidding. Smells like another Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox to me. For instance:

      Cherry Corporation [cherrycorp.com]
      Point-of-Sale, Automotive
      Cherry Semiconductor [cherry-semi.com]
      Discrete IC's (now owned by ON Semiconductor [onsemi.com])

      Maybe they are getting out of the whole crowded fruit-based naming convention, and thus, avoid the obligatory Pac-Man jokes that

    • Actually, it appears that SCO invented Apple, and are charging $699 US for each copy of CherryOS downloaded, installed or referred to on the web.

  • Too bad (Score:3, Funny)

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

    • Re:Too bad (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Stick_Fig ( 740331 )
      I make a funny joke about popping a cherry, and it gets modded down as flamebait. Such is life. Whenever I call someone a nerd on /., it's meant lovingly.

      To not take this post off-topic, it's terrible that the CherryOS is getting so much attention. PearPC is a great project, and the damage that CherryOS has done to the PearPC project is almost irreversible.

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

    by Flaming_cows ( 798162 ) * on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:00PM (#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 @06:01PM (#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 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:10PM (#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.
      • Not true at all. There was a publically available patch for sound but it was horrible. Some have talked about starting work on it again but not much has happened with PearPC lately, period. It's only started looking like an active project again in the last few weeks.

  • Cherry O's (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:01PM (#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 @06:02PM (#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 @06:07PM (#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.
    • In this instance, I think copyright violation would take precedence over the GPL, and since it's a clear violation of copyright... that the GPL aspect of things wouldn't even come into play in court.

    • Oh Please. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by spiderworm ( 830684 )
      If SCO [yahoo.com] can get the kind of funding they did for their campaign-o-crap, don't you think certain companies [osdl.org] might step up and chip in a couple mil to help the GPL stand up in court?
  • And since we know CherryOS is crap, I thought I'd ask a question related to emulation as a whole. I'm not very "up" on PearPC or OS emulation at all...

    At some stage would it be possible to run OS X through a Linux back end w/o having X or a Linux DE running at all?

    What I'm saying is, could it evolve to where you boot right into OSX? Or does it have to run in a window (like the screenshots show)?

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

    by pbjones ( 315127 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:08PM (#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 @06:09PM (#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?
    • An EULA has a different legal standing to a software license. It's a contract between the copyright owner and the user. As well as granting permission to copy the software for specific purposes, an EULA typically forces the user to agree with contractual conditions beyond the scope of copyright (for example, what you may use the software to do, or whether you are permitted to write a unfavourable review of the software). So, although a number of people present the GPL as a click-through-license, it's not

    • Well, I care because I think it's funny. The idea that we should ignore them and not give them attention does carry some weight with me, but I'm not concerned that giving them attention is going to do any serious damage. I wouldn't think the attention would result in actual sales of their product, which could be the only damage I could see, but if it did, I'd still blame the purchaser for not doing some research.

      It's kind of a "do we feed the trolls for entertainment, or ignore them and hope they go awa

  • Can anyone help? (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:18PM (#12148558) Journal
    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?

    • I think you need to rewrite your dynamic memory modules so they don't get corrupted by the electron oscillation in the cross-channelled capacitors.
      The problem is, all these operating systems use different sizes of electrons. You have to use a virtual compiler to reinstate the Java Virtual Machine on an ISA Port, and that will enable your electrons to recalibrate.
      As you know, the monitor works with an electron gun. Your different size electrons are probably hitting the monitor at the same time, and the wave
    • I asked a similar question of the Connectix guys a few years ago? It was something like: "If I ran Ram-Doubler on my Mac, then Virtual PC, then RAM-Doubler for the PC on the Virtual PC, how much RAM would I get?"
      Their eyes crossed and they started babbling...
    • Doom3 is a classic application. Start classic in 10.3.8.

    • Re:Can anyone help? (Score:4, Funny)

      by DennisZeMenace ( 131127 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @08:07PM (#12149428) Homepage
      All I'm getting is a black screen. Is there something wrong, or am I playing the game already?

      A black screen ? You're definitely playing the game already.

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

    by Dejohn ( 164452 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:19PM (#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.

  • Cherry OS Press Contact (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From a former press release: Jim Kartes, 866-661-5699 jim@vx30.com From VX30.com [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

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

    by rogabean ( 741411 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:36PM (#12148706)
    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@thoryEULERk.com minus math_god> on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @06:44PM (#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@thoryEULERk.com minus math_god> on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @07:09PM (#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
    • Parent appears to know what he's talking about. I know that's against the site rules, but I won't grass him up if you don't.

  • Open Source is not opposed to commercial. Open Source is opposed to secret source, not commercial. There are definitely companies who's sole purpose is to make a profit on Open Source software. If that's not commercial, I don't know what is.

  • Source Date (Score:2, Interesting)

    by UrlFlynn ( 661707 ) *
    Interesting that the date on the page source is from 11/25/04... Have they been contemplating this for 4 months?

  • Who the hell cares (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The GPL is invalid, its an illegal and immoral license and is non-enforcable. That is why I will never use Linux or any GPL software EVER. I would only use Solaris for any UNIX development I had to do.

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