Is this a breach of Licence

[Hardy, Allan]

A bit interesting, academically at least.  vTiger describes itself as collective work and contains something like 22 different oss software, many under GPL (so IM not sure its wrong to discuss here)

Generically there is nothing wrong with rebranding a GPL work, as long as you maintain all the existing copyright notices. Document and provide source for modifications of course.  So if someone took a attribution/copyright notice off a screen, etc then that might be an issue.  In general any effort to hide the origination would seem to be an issue, perhaps legally, at least ethically.

Of course you can always put an additional trademark restriction around your GPL work, like Redhat does.  So changing/removing any logos trademarks would be a violation but not of GPL terms.  OSS licenses are inconsistent when it comes to trademark protection.  GPL is silent, several just restrict the right to use any trademarks. I believe Apace forces you to maintain any trademarks. You would have to examine all 22 products for not just their licenses but copyright terms, trademark statements, that kind of thing.

One slightly interesting thing is vTiger packages and distributes products with incompatible licenses.  GPL and Apache for example.  What I don't know is if the Apache and GPL products are integrated, which with distribution could be a technical issue though I don't any of the copyright owners is going to support your case.

A last quick thing is some of the application that are integrated with the GPL MySQL Database, like SugarLand are not covered under the MySQL FLOSS exception.  The packaging and distribution of SugarLand with MySWL makes this a slightly interesting angle, though its a real nit and I doubt any oss copyright owners, like Sun/MySQL are going to support you, an given that SPL is almost MPL which is covered under MySQL FLOSS is a very weak claim and easily fixed.

Of course your competitor is not wrapping their offering in yet another license, that would be problematic for them. Or if they are putting proprietary licenses on any special sauce, add-ons, or not offering source - given all the GPL that could be problematic for them as well.  In general if they are offering full oss solution, with source code, - they have done a fairly smart and at least generally allowable thing.  

Have you asked the vTiger community how they feel about people re-badging their work?  It seems in general your only competitive strategy would be whatever you would do to compete with vTiger itself, features, support, service, quality.  

IANAL and this was just thinking out loud.

Allan




-----Original Message-----
From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Charron
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 7:37 AM
To: greg.soper at salesagility.com
Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: Re: Is this a breach of Licence

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Greg Soper<greg.soper at salesagility.com> wrote:
> A company we are aware of has rebranded vTiger and passed it off as there
> own software.
>
> vTiger is covered by the SugarCRM Public Licence and by a derivation of the
> MPL, the vtiger Public License Version 1.0
> http://www.vtiger.com/products/crm/vtiger-public-license.html
>
> Does this allow me to lift the codebase wholesale, stick my logo on it and
> pass it off as my own work, or does this clause come into play from the
> above licence?

  I think this may be the wrong list to ask, as this list is generally
GPL specific, however..

  IANAL, however.  What you quoted isn't a 'way out'.  It says if you
modify it, you have to describe the changes when you send the source
code alongside of the executable.  In your case, this is PHP, however,
so the sources *are* the executable.  Now, if they rip the *license*
out of the sources as well, that's a different ball game.

-- 
-- Thomas