FreeNAS GPL violation

[Chris DiBona]

I'm not sure if Jeremy is on this list, but he keeps an eye out on
such things and can best comment.

Chris

On Oct 8, 2007 12:07 PM, Rufus Dufus <gplwatcher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Hi,
>
>   Could the list review this and make sure I'm not off, on my assessment of
> this GPL violation.
>
>
>   It came to my attention that a open source project called FreeNAS, a
> FreeBSD/m0n0wall based NAS distro was violating the GPL v2 and v3 (With the
> latest version of Samba). I posted a message on thier forum, informing them
> they were not in compliance in two key areas of the GPL license, first the
> requirement of including the text of the GPL license and they needed to also
> make available the source code to the GPL componets used. I was met with
> what I would call finger pointing, the
> source code is on the authors site, us providing source will cause
> unregulated copies etc, and the FreeNAS author told me he didn't include the
> GPL license itself because, quoting Olivier Cochard ;
>
> "I didn't include the GPL licence itself because I don't want to create some
> confusion with the user: FreeNAS code (shell script, and PHP code) is under
> BSD licence, but some of the software that it use are under GPL licence (and
> other licences too)."
>
> Obviously he knew about the GPL and the other licenses he mentioned, and
> made the decision not to honor the terms, but did include text regarding
> m0n0wall ;
> "Portions from m0n0wall, both documentation and source code, copyright
> 2002-2005 Manuel Kasper, and m0n0wall Documentation Project."
>
> FreeNAS is also violating the terms of the Apache license for the
> mDNSresponder and the PHP license for PHP v5 by not including thier license
> text as well. And there is a possible license compatibility issue here as
> well.
>
>
>  The end users rights according to the GPL are being blantantly abused here,
> one reading thier license gets the impression the entire project is being
> distributed under the FreeBSD license.
>
> The SVN for this project contains only patches for the various GPL componets
> they used, the original source code not available, and nearly all of the SVN
> entries for the GPL componets don't even tell you what version they are
> using for the binaries they distribute.
>
>
>
>
>  I think I was more than cordial about this situation with them, and
> provided the information they needed to comply, unfortunately after some 2
> months, I don't think they care about being in compliance.
>
>
>
>
> Original post with me asking them to comply, please notice the date span and
> the lack of response to my "Bump" message :
>
> http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1806830&forum_id=507589
>
>
> SVN for the project, contains directory references to the GPL'd code :
>
>
> http://freenas.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/freenas/
>
>
>
> FreeNAS license page from their website :
>
> http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3&Itemid=23
>
>
>



-- 
Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
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