Evidence against CherryOS mounts


DrunkenBlog reports in an article entitled The pits in CherryOS that Maui X-Stream's OS X on PC emulator is little more than a rip off of PearPC. Here are three points highlighted in the article, which at first blush seem rather damning:

• There are PearPC graphics embedded inside the CherryOS executable. If you browse the CherryOS executable with a hexbrowser and go to 0xF9140 you'll find this graphic which you can see in this PearPC screenshot. This one is just beyond amusing.
• When you take the CherryOS files Cherry IDE.dat, OSMAC.AXM, and CASE.EXM and concatenate them together (ie, like turn 3 files into 1) you end up with a file that is identical to PearPC's video.x file.
• Throw the PearPC executable into the same folder as CherryOS.exe and run a program to run a comparison of the code, and you start finding all kinds of code matches, string matches (think english sentences), etc.

Maui X-Stream has denied any sort of theft, intentional or otherwise. However, as is becoming increasingly clear in the available professional analysis (ie the above), the company either needs to come clean or offer plausible explanations as to why these "similarities" exist.

Also, DrunkenBlog's write up includes a link to this forum thread, which it says contains "the most damning evidence."

The article also takes Maui X-Stream's speed claims to task, which at best appear to be on par with PearPC.

Editor's note: It was hoped that CherryOS would shake up Apple, and perhaps force the company to expand distribution and/or license OS X. If nothing else, it was hoped CherryOS would expose the unwashed in large numbers to the fairer platform.

The growing body evidence that Maui X-Stream has engaged in wholesale theft of open-source code leaves these hopes in tatters.

What's your take?