[SR-Users] Possible GPL violation by third party (4PSA)

[Daniel-Constantin Mierla]

Hello,

we have been discussion on management groups since this morning to 
understand the issue and see what can be done. However, it seems that a 
link to the sources has been published in the forum pointed by the link 
in the email. Perhaps that closes this specific case.

Anyhow, for sake of getting some clarifications for the future ...

Starting with the remark that none of us are lawyers, so we recommend 
that everyone in a similar situation should seek professional advice, 
the GPL sets the contraint of distributing the source code along with 
binaries between a vendor/person (let's say entity) using GPL software 
and its clients. If the binaries are made public to everyone via open 
web/ftp/etc servers, my personal understanding is that source code 
should be made available as well or at least upon request by interested 
people. If the binaries were purchase and were accessible only via some 
commercial relation, only the one that purchased the binaries is 
entitled to ask for source code.

Kamailio project itself can assist by testifying it is indeed a GPLv2 
software (if needed, being something public is easy to check), but I 
don't think it can enforce it or get in between two foreign entities, 
without any relation to the developers holding GPL copyright. Again, my 
understanding.

To anyone being interested to read more, here are some links that could 
be useful (thanks to the people in the management groups of the project 
that pointed them to me):
- http://gpl-violations.org
- https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.en.html

Also, if somebody has remarks or links to related resource to 
contribute, please do it, they can be valuable for everyone in the 
community.

We hope that everyone out there will play honest and follow GPL rules, 
so it will be no need for complex actions by any of the users of 
Kamailio project. It is an open collaboration environment and we aim for 
a fair ecosystem.

Cheers,
Daniel

On 01/07/14 03:22, Matthew Costa wrote:
> 4PSA develop and sell a software suite called VoipNow Professional
> (version 2.5) which, amongst other things, includes it's own packaged copy
> of Kamailio. This version is derived from Kamailio version 1.5.4.
>
> The software installs a binary release from a 4PSA repository. The RPM
> information contains the following:
>
> # rpm -qi voipnow-kamailio-1.5.4-130312.41.rhel5
>
> Name        : voipnow-kamailio             Relocations: (not relocatable)
> Version     : 1.5.4                             Vendor: Rack-Soft, Inc
> <devel at 4psa.com>
> Release     : 130312.41.rhel5               Build Date: Tue 12 Mar 2013
> 18:31:30 EST
> Install Date: Sun 02 Feb 2014 00:15:14 EST      Build Host:
> rhel5-1.64b.build.4psa.ro
> Group       : System Environment/Daemons    Source RPM:
> voipnow-kamailio-1.5.4-130312.41.rhel5.src.rpm
> Size        : 6599403                          License: GPL
> Signature   : RSA/SHA1, Tue 12 Mar 2013 18:35:28 EST, Key ID
> 42ba8c472f75de11
> Packager    : Rack-Soft, Inc <devel at 4psa.com>
> URL         : http://kamailio.org/
> Summary     : Kamailio, a very fast and flexible SIP Proxy
>
> I've made a direct request to 4PSA for the source code for this package,
> only to be told they don't release their sources. The request, and
> subsequent response, can be found at
> http://my.4psa.com/4psa/topics/where_can_i_find_the_source_code_for_the_voipnow_2_5_x_modified_version_of_kamailio .
>
> For those interested, the following packages are included with VoipNow
> which are derived from GPL software. There is no source available for any
> of these from the vendor.
>
> # rpm -qa |grep voipnow
> voipnow-spandsp-0.0.6-100708.10.rhel5
> voipnow-asterisk-1.6.1.20-130312.07.rhel5
> voipnow-asterisk-addons-1.6.1-130131.30.rhel5
> voipnow-php-2.5.5-130312.11.rhel5
> voipnow-sox-14.3.1-100723.30.rhel5
> voipnow-asterisk-sounds-1.4.22-100723.25.rhel5
> voipnow-kamailio-1.5.4-130312.41.rhel5
> voipnow-ejabberd-2.1.4-100723.29.rhel5
> voipnow-asterisk-debuginfo-1.6.1.20-120417.09.rhel5
> voipnow-asterisk-extra-2.5.5-130312.11.rhel5
>
>
>
> My requests are falling on deaf ears. Does anybody know how to make them
> take this matter seriously?
>
> Cheers,
> Matthew Costa
> Infrastructure Manager
>   
>   <http://www.greenlight-itc.com/>
> Suite 703, Level 7
> 815 Pacific Highway Chatswood 2067
> tel: 02 8412 0000 fax: 02 8412 0001
>
>
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-- 
Daniel-Constantin Mierla - http://www.asipto.com
http://twitter.com/#!/miconda - http://www.linkedin.com/in/miconda