Re: WRT54G

Re: WRT54G

[www.sveasoft.com]

Just to shed some light on our 'evil claws' I would like to clarify our
development and licensing model for Sveasoft's WRT54G firmware.

We have two versions of firmware, stable and unstable, much like the Linux
kernel.

Stable versions are released for free (beer) with full source code.

Unstable versions are released to Sveasoft subscribers only, during the
development period (20 USD yearly subscription fee).

All GPL code is released under the GPL as per GPL stipulations.

Sveasoft userspace applications entirely developed by us are only released
to subscribers during the development phase. When stable these additons are
released under the Apache 2.0 license with an additional clause that they
may not be released under a more restrictive license.

What folks are mirroring and arguing about are our unstable, development
releases including code developed entirely by Sveasoft and not licensed for
general release. Stable releases are free (beer) with full source code and
are available from many different sites. Mirroring unstable dev releases is
not 'helping your neighbor' plus they contain applications developed
entirely by us not licensed for general release.

Our development cycle is approximately three months from unstable,
subscriber-only to stable, free (beer) releases. We released Nirvana stable
Dec 2003, Samadhi stable Mar 2004, Satori stable June 2004, and will be
releasing Alchemy stable in Sept 2004. We see this as a 'good thing' and a
contribution to the open source community.

Our subscription model is not making anyone rich. It is, however, allowing a
little boutique project to survice while several similar projects have
withered and died.

Why folks insist on mirroring unstable, development code that include
additions we have specifically not licensed for redistribution until stable
under the guise that the GPL gives them this right is beyond my
comprehension. Perhaps gurus like Alan C. can explain why our model is evil
and we should be done away with and why the GPL gives these folks this
right?

James Ewing
Sveasoft Inc.

Re: WRT54G

[Daniel Egger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 892 bytes --]

On 22.09.2004, at 09:41, www.sveasoft.com wrote:

> What folks are mirroring and arguing about are our unstable, 
> development
> releases including code developed entirely by Sveasoft and not 
> licensed for
> general release. Stable releases are free (beer) with full source code 
> and
> are available from many different sites. Mirroring unstable dev 
> releases is
> not 'helping your neighbor' plus they contain applications developed
> entirely by us not licensed for general release.

That part about this I don't understand is why you're disclosing
your propietary non-free software in unstable at all. Simply
remove it from the tarball and you don't have to worry about
illegal copies making the round; after all you still have to
provide the GPLed part of the code at least to the buyers of the
unstable version which themselves have the right to spread it.

Servus,
       Daniel

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 478 bytes --]

Re: WRT54G

[Alan Cox]

On Mer, 2004-09-22 at 08:41, www.sveasoft.com wrote:
> Why folks insist on mirroring unstable, development code that include
> additions we have specifically not licensed for redistribution until stable
> under the guise that the GPL gives them this right is beyond my
> comprehension. Perhaps gurus like Alan C. can explain why our model is evil
> and we should be done away with and why the GPL gives these folks this
> right?

Thanks for clarifying all this. I'm not going to tell anyone their
business model is evil (well unless it includes things like shooting
Colombian trade unionists to keep drink prices down). 

What you do with code you created, and which isn't derivative of other
code is -your business-. A lot of free software people do ask that it is
made clear which bits are free and which are not. I've never looked at
your development code to know how you handle this. 

Alan

WRT54G

[Aiko Barz]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1218 bytes --]

Hi there!

It's the wrt54g subject again...
I'm mirroring the Sveasoft-firmware, which was published under the
terms of "GPL". At least Sveasoft said that. Of course, many drivers
are closed. And others look like this:
 * This is UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE of Broadcom Corporation;
Since those drivers are kept outside the kernel-tree it might be
allright with the GPL.

Now, wind changed quite a bit: Sveasoft wants money for their
firmware. (It's ok with me.) Sveasoft actually sells the code. You
only get a copy if you are a registered, paying Sveasoft-user. This
also covers the GPL-part.

This site http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp also implies, that i
can redistribute those drivers and firmwares. But it is the same
problem with them. Those wrt54g-firmwares also contain non-GPL
sourcecodes and binaries.

Sveasoft is hunting down mirrorsites right now. Of course, they want
to earn some money. So i'm not sure what I should do next?!
Going down or asking for the rest of the code?

Bis denne,
        Aiko

-- 
  .~.	 Aiko Barz
  /v\ 	 
 // \\	 Mail: aiko@chroot.de
/( _ )\  Web:  http://www.chroot.de
 ^^ ^^   PGP:  http://www.chroot.de/index.php?navi=GnuPG


[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: WRT54G

[Alan Cox]

On Sul, 2004-09-19 at 10:58, Aiko Barz wrote:
> Hi there!
> 
> It's the wrt54g subject again...
> I'm mirroring the Sveasoft-firmware, which was published under the
> terms of "GPL". At least Sveasoft said that. 

Can you prove they said that ?

> This site http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp also implies, that i
> can redistribute those drivers and firmwares. But it is the same
> problem with them. Those wrt54g-firmwares also contain non-GPL
> sourcecodes and binaries.

It's up to Linksys what license they grant you for their non-free stuff.
If its linked with GPL stuff then it might be GPL because its a
derivative work. Sveasoft's only business is code they own the copyright
to themselves and didn't give other people rights to redistribute (or
gave them specifically revokable rights to distribute)

> Sveasoft is hunting down mirrorsites right now. Of course, they want
> to earn some money. So i'm not sure what I should do next?!
> Going down or asking for the rest of the code?

That depends what they said about the code and what you can prove about
it. Sveasoft's evil claws extend only to code they themselves own
copyright to and have not already granted things like GPL rights too (or
any other irrevocable right). 

It highlights the dangers of relying on a partially proprietary software
stack, as well as why Richard Stallman always asks vendors of Linux and
other free software products that if they also bundle non-free software
it is easy to tell which is which. Hence Debian has a seperate non-free
archive, Fedora is open source only but there are third party yum
repositories for non-free products and so on.

Alan

Re: WRT54G

[Daniel Egger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1824 bytes --]

On 20.09.2004, at 15:13, Alan Cox wrote:

>> This site http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp also implies, that i
>> can redistribute those drivers and firmwares. But it is the same
>> problem with them. Those wrt54g-firmwares also contain non-GPL
>> sourcecodes and binaries.

> It's up to Linksys what license they grant you for their non-free 
> stuff.
> If its linked with GPL stuff then it might be GPL because its a
> derivative work. Sveasoft's only business is code they own the 
> copyright
> to themselves and didn't give other people rights to redistribute (or
> gave them specifically revokable rights to distribute)

IANAL but I'd very calm about this specific threat. Linksys published
the complete source code to this router product including Makefiles
to build your own firmware. The only parts which were only delivered
as binaries are the tools to assemble a firmware, the bootloader and
the helper code for the OpenSource module controlling the WLAN chipset.

Most of the software they bundle is GPL (including the kernel, uclibc
(LGPL), busybox, iptables, dnsmasq...) so Linksys is doing pretty well
in releasing the source. The also include applications which are
marked "propietary" but AFAIS they're not linked against any GPLed
source so I'd consider them still as belonging to Linksys.

IOW if Sveasoft is distributing any *part* of the original firmware
(and they have to at least for the WLAN interface) they're in
violation of the GPL *and* (probably illegally) distributing
propietary applications written or licensed by Linksys. And I really
doubt they changed the OS to something non-GPLed and use a
completely different environment.

If I were them I'd rather hide behind rock and hope that noone
notices that they're violating licenses instead of threatening people.

Servus,
       Daniel

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 478 bytes --]