RSSCherryOS Drama Ends, Product Retired
By Nate Mook | Published May 9, 2005, 12:33 PM
The drawn out saga between Macintosh emulator CherryOS and PearPC has come to an end, with CherryOS developer Arben Kryeziu announcing in his Web log that he has shut down the project. The news follows Kryeziu's claims in April that he would open up the source code of CherryOS to prove it was not stolen from PearPC.
CherryOS enabled users to run Apple's Mac OS X operating system atop Windows PCs. However, the closed product closely mimicked the functionality of PearPC, an open source project. After its initial announcement and subsequent controversy last October, CherryOS was released in trial form last March by Maui-X-Stream.
As reported by 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.
In response, PearPC threatened to sue Maui-X-Stream for GPL violations and began to raise money for the case. Despite the similarities, Maui-X-Stream staunchly defended CherryOS as original and last month, Kryeziu promised he would launch CherryOS as an open source project on May 1.
In a posting to his Web log over the weekend, however, Kryeziu said plans for an open source CherryOS had been abandoned and development would cease. The CherryOS Web site has also been removed.
"I decided that C-OS is not worth the hassle, not now or in the future," Kryeziu wrote. "C-OS went to work without brushing its teeth or taking a shower, it was not ready. Other current open source projects are progressing to the desired product; Qemu will soon support OS X and lead the way."
But it may not be the last Maui-X-Stream hears from the open source community. The attention CherryOS brought caused some code sleuths to also uncover potentially stolen source code in the company's streaming video codecs - where Maui-X-Stream primarily makes its business.
They (Maui-X-Stream) has stolen the spirit of open source and became thiefs in this case. We should appreciate people who spent time and energy to enable us using their product for free, not to sell it back...
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|I've never heard of these two programs, but I'm glad to see Open Source organization with the ability to find programs making use of Open Source apps for illegal practices.
Open Source cannot take a proprietary program and sell it as it's own just as you cannot take an Open Source app and sell (or give it out) without including the legal strings attached, such as distributing the source, and in some, if not all cases, the same license.
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|Maui-X-Stream makes it's living off of stolen code. Thanks to their blunder with PearPC's code, they will now be brought to justice for their thefts.
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|No company would seriously abandon an expensive to develop software product if there was not something to hide - particularly at the stage where the product was becoming genuinely useful. To write an emulator of this type is not cheap, and requires many hours of very skilled labour from its programmers. PearPC is testament to the talent and determination of the individuals who contributed to it. The open source community should push ahead with lawsuits against these common criminals, and set a precedent against this type of theft. It appears that other products by this company are based on stolen code also. The Xvid team may be interested in looking at the streaming video Pirateware that this company is selling.
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|Wasn't XviD a hacked DivX which was a hacked MS codec at one time? Or was that the Angel codec? So many hacks these days...
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|lmao.
Creating an open-source hack of commercial software is acceptable.
Creating a closed-source, commercial hack of open-source software....is not.
Isn't hypocrisy fun, kids?
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|Thats not all that true. XviD is currently under the gun for patent infringement becose it is MPEG4 based and MPEG4 is patented compresion technology.
It's not the people that are writing the source that are risking problems though. It is the groups that are compiling the code and releasing binarys.
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|It was a joke. Both are just as bad legally, but one seems much more socially acceptable than the other... (And making an open-source version of a commercial project is entirely legal so long as no source code is blantantly stolen and no patents are stepped upon.)
And I'd love to comment ont he XviD/DivX situation, as I think it is absoluelty hilarious, but...this isn't about codecs, and I don't want Aries to yell at me. ;)
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|Actually, that's not quite accurate. The terms of the license agreement were violated by the CherryOS developer. If the developer had complied and released the relevant code as required by the license it would have been a non-issue to create a potentially closed source application from PearPC. What these people (read this guy) did was take the PearPC code and change the variable names a little bit (if memory serves) and then sold the code as his own application in violation of the PearPC TOS.
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|ahhhem
THIS IS NOT A ..
Kidding again..
;-)
Ok, it's out of my system now, honest. ;-)
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