Possible GPL-Violation by Freecom Technology

[Johannes Storm]

Hi,

i am new here, so i don't know if this is the right list :-D
a few days ago i send this message to license-violation at gpl-violations.org,
but i had not seen your mailing-lists. so here again:

***********************************************************
Hi,

i am Johannes Storm and this is a letter about a possible GPL-violation by
Freecom Technology GmbH. I have to wrote the letter because Freecom don't
publish the code of the current firmware versions for some of their products.
This firmware runs on Freecom Storage Gateway (FSG3), Datatank (DT2) and Network
Drive Pro (VT4) and consists almost entirely of free software.

The first version with unpublished code is 4.4.2 from Febuary 13th 2008. There
are alot requests to Freecom about the code by email, phone and in the official
forum:
- http://www.freecomforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9710
- http://www.freecomforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16569
- http://www.openfsg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7618
and not least, this letter.

The support of Freecom always say that they forward the requests and the code
will be published soon, but nothing happens since over a year.
We also know from Freecom support that there is no active development anymore
on this firmware.
But because there is a active community, which develop and support themselves,
it is necessary to get the newest code for futher working on a Community Release
(http://www.openfsg.com/index.php/FSG-3_Community_Release).

This letter is to ask Freecom to publish the code and continue to do so
promptly in all subsequent versions too.
Futhermore i call on the copyright holders of the affected software to
enforce their rights.

Thank you very much
Johannes Storm



The following list shows parts of the inluded OpenSource Software and some
infomations:
- gpl-violation.txt



This open letter will be published to Freecom, Free Software Foundation and
the copyright holders or maintainers of the included open source software:

supportde at freecom.com
license-violation at gnu.org
linux at sentec-elektronik.de
list at apache.org
buytenh at gnu.org
busybox at busybox.net
gerg at snapgear.com
yoichi at fore.com
simon at thekelleys.org.uk
dave at humbug.demon.co.uk
fetchmail-devel at lists.berlios.de
miklos at szeredi.hu
gerg at moreton.com.au
coreteam at netfilter.org
neilb at suse.de
kobras at linux.de
szaka at ntfs-3g.org
ken_yap at users.sourceforge.net
tobias at ratschiller.com
paulus at samba.org
cananian at alumni.princeton.edu
derrell at samba.org
wessels at squid-cache.org
chris at scary.beasts.org
jt at hpl.hp.com

info at linuxnewmedia.de
redaktion at linux-community.de


**********************************************

I also have this letter sent via post to freecom. Until now the only replys
are:
From ntfs-3g:

--------
Hi Johannes,

Thank you for the information. I'll forward it to our lawyer.
Unfortunately this is not the first and I'm afraid not the
last case.

Please send all further related emails to my email address
only. Thank you again.

Best regards,
		Szaka
--------

and netfilter:

--------
Hi Johannes,

iptables (C) 2000-2002 by the netfilter coreteam <coreteam at netfilter.org>

This is a quite old version in which I probably don't own enough
copyrights to consider enforcing them. Could you provide me with
the kernel version used in the products in question?

Thanks.

....

They're actually quite slow and bad at enforcing I'm told.
I'd suggest you contact gpl-violations.org, Harald has been
transfered the copyrights to mtd and a few other parts which
are commonly used in these devices.
-------


I realy don't know why Freecom don't publish the sources, because
they have done it at the old versions and there are realy no great
changes (changelog).

Sorry for so much text, but on FSF page i read they like to know details.
Many thanks for all your great work that you have already done for
opensource community.

by johannes




-- 
Ich unterstütze signierten und verschlüsselten Emailverkehr
via S/MIME (X.509 Class I) und PGP (OpenPGP).

-- Ende Signatur: Johannes Storm --------------------------


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