Subject: Re: GPL Violations

From: Andrew Tridgell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 00:13:27 +1000

Raymond,

Thanks for letting me know. 

I'll contact them and give them a reminder about the GPL on Samba. 

I would appreciate it if you could send me the output of "strings
smbd" and "strings nmbd" or whatever they call the Samba daemons on
their system.

I am actually greatly in favour of companies using GPLd software in
commercial systems, as long as they remain within the GPL. Hopefully
this can be sorted out amicably and we can welcome them aboard as
supporters of free software.

Regards, Andrew

--
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Andrew Tridgell                            Dept. of Computer Science
email: [email-masked]          Australian National University 
Phone: +61 6 254 8209                      Fax: +61 6 249 0010
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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From: "Bailey, Raymond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 09:39:25 -0400

Hello Sirs,

 Some time ago I may have contacted some of you (I think I copied Mr.
Torvalds on my original message to the FSF) about a company that is
using a Linux distribution with several common applications to produce a
standalone, PC-based CD-Rom Server machine. The machine is a PC Server
with a multitude of CDrom drives attached, running Linux with apache,
nfsd, Samba, Mars-Netware-Emulator, and various other pieces of GPL'd
software to serve CDrom content to client workstations.

 Disappointingly, Procom fails to advertise that the system is running
Linux or any of the other aforementioned products. Even more
disappointing is the fact that they seem to have edited a great deal of
code in order to obscure the fact that the machine is running Linux. All
references to the name "Linux" are removed from their product
distribution, such that when the machine boots theres very little way
one can tell the machine is running Linux at all.

 More seriously, Procom have failed to provide source code or patches
for any of the software on the system, which includes, among other
things, GNU Sh-utils, fileutils, etc., and NetKit. The media I have is
marked version 1.3.2, so they seem to have gone through enough revisions
to eliminate the possibility that this was a mere oversight on their
part. Additionally, they've not posted the source to their FTP server,
even though I don't think that's enough to satisfy the requirements
regarding source availability in the GPL.

 Some time ago I contacted the president of Procom Technology, Alex
Razmjoo who replied only that they'd "look into this". I received a call
from a product engineer there who stated that they had originally
planned only to prototype their product on Linux but, not suprisingly,
Linux dominated the other commercial Unix variants they were testing
when it came time to ship the product. He explained to me that,
therefore, they decided to ship the Linux based product, but that their
schedule had been too tight to get the source release integrated in the
product. I explained to him that this was a pretty blatant and severe
misuse of GPL'd software, and the engineer promised me that the source
code would be delivered, along with their diffs and even the
specification for their rpc management functions. Well over a month has
past and I've not been contacted about a source release

 I contacted Richard Stallman a week or so ago and informed him that
indeed a great deal of GNU code was being included with the Procom
product, and now think that it's appropriate to inform the authors of
the other major components of the package that Procom is relying on in
order to make their product work. I haven't. 

 Procoms website can be found at www.procom.com

R. Andrew Bailey, Jaded
Sr. Systems Programmer
Marshall University Computing Services
http://webpages.marshall.edu/~bailey9/

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From: Kent Landfield <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 09:58:58 -0500 (CDT)

# 
# Raymond,
# 
# Thanks for letting me know. 
# 
# I'll contact them and give them a reminder about the GPL on Samba. 
# 
# I would appreciate it if you could send me the output of "strings
# smbd" and "strings nmbd" or whatever they call the Samba daemons on
# their system.
# 
# I am actually greatly in favour of companies using GPLd software in
# commercial systems, as long as they remain within the GPL. Hopefully
# this can be sorted out amicably and we can welcome them aboard as
# supporters of free software.
# 
# Regards, Andrew
# 
# --
# =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
# Andrew Tridgell                            Dept. of Computer Science
# email: [email-masked]          Australian National University 
# Phone: +61 6 254 8209                      Fax: +61 6 249 0010
# =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
# 

Why was this sent to the wu-ftpd list ?  There is no GPLed code in
wu-ftpd that I am aware of. The only references are to building it which
may require certain GNU utilities. This is certainly off-topic and I would
resent any GPL strong-arming of wu-ftpd sources.  I truly hope this was not 
the intent of your message posted to the wu-ftpd development and support list.

-- 
Kent Landfield                        Phone: 1-817-545-2502             
Email: [email-masked]             http://www.landfield.com/
Please send comp.sources.misc related mail to [email-masked].
Search the Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/

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From: Kent Landfield <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 10:24:44 -0500 (CDT)

I am sorry for the tone of the message.  I now know that you were simply
replying to the message sent.   This is a touchy area for alot of us who
have been developing software for free, for years.  I received the original
message totally out of order and have asked the orginal author why wu-ftpd
was included.  He stated it was a mistake.  

# Why was this sent to the wu-ftpd list ?  There is no GPLed code in
# wu-ftpd that I am aware of. The only references are to building it which
# may require certain GNU utilities. This is certainly off-topic and I would
# resent any GPL strong-arming of wu-ftpd sources.  I truly hope this was not 
# the intent of your message posted to the wu-ftpd development and support list.

Please accept my apology for my confusion.

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From: Andrew Tridgell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 01:10:50 +1000

> the intent of your message posted to the wu-ftpd development and support list.

Kent,

I apologise for the mistake. I should have checked the CC list more
carefully. I was replying to a message from Raymond that was CCd to
this list.

Regards, Andrew