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How Ubiquiti Networks Is Creatively Violating the GPL
New submitter futuristicrabbit writes: Networking company Ubiquiti Networks violates the GPL, but not in the way you'd expect. Not only did the kernel shipped in their router firmware not correspond to the sources given, but their failure to provide the source led to a vulnerability they created being unpatched long after its disclosure. They're maintaining the appearance of compliance without actually complying with the GPL.
I have the edgerouter POE, which is a fantastic piece of hardware, but it still doesn't support proper vlan tagging controls on the embedded switch ports. A feature I would add myself but the hardware isn't open enough to do it without a lot of reverse engineering.
So, this makes me wonder if they are sort of stuck between stupid hardware companies and the GPL. They may not be able to publish changes to the open source products without violating their NDAs with the manufactures of assorted chips/etc they use.
I'm not trying to defend them, just point out a situation I've found myself in. GPL software is great for bootstraping a project, but for some of these platforms it can be a real PITA. I feel for small companies like Ubiquiti. But I'm pretty irritated by Sony, broadcom, cisco, etc which are also playing the same game.
No, modifying the code means you have created a derivative work and need to release those code changes to anybody using it.
Which is what the license has said for at least 20 years.
There is no provision to make changes to GPL code and not release it.
If you have an application which is only ever inside your corporate firewall, it's unlikely the people in accounting will want to see the source code. But you sure as hell can't modify it, build a product around it, and then not release those changes.
Your understanding is wrong.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I used to work for a company that was meant to be a partner of Ubiquiti -- from the first meeting with Robert, one could tell this was not going to be a "share and share alike" partnership -- more likely it was going to be a one party gives, the other takes partnership. We as partners needed access to some parts of the code, and in meetings said we'd like to get the source, and given that it was built on GPL'd code, we figured it would be a non-issue. How wrong we were. Basically told that was never gonna happen, not for us, nor anyone else that wanted it, it was their IP. Robert's one of Forbe's 10 youngest billionaires. He's gotten stinking rich off others, and refuses to give back. It certainly douses your faith in the human spirit somewhat. Anyway, not that it's much better, but you can always buy from MikroTik (ducks! ;-) )
Yeah, we should all be using closed source shit and live hapily in laa-laa land. Or we could use BSD kind of licenses, create software for free and pay money to get closed source shit back. Wohoo!
Yet another brand of router to avoid.
At least unless there's DD-WRT or something for the hardware, I won't buy one that isn't supported by real open-source software (even if I stick with their router SW).
DD-WRT is hardly a posterchild of open router software, they extensively use binary drivers in their releases, especially on the BCM platform.
OpenWRT is what you want as a baseline.