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Shaman
join:2014-12-16
Kingston, ON

Shaman

Member

Seems Ubiquiti may be violating the GPL

»libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/

Interesting?
wtm
join:2011-04-23
Tempe, AZ

wtm

Member

Has he been banned yet on the UBNT forum?

TomS_
Git-r-done
MVM
join:2002-07-19
London, UK

2 recommendations

TomS_ to Shaman

MVM

to Shaman
It wouldnt just be Ubiquity that does this kind of thing.

Linksys has been "in trouble" for the same kind of thing in the past, and Im sure there are many others.

At least for the operating system, I dont understand why people who want to make commercial products out of open source OS's dont use one of the BSDs. Unlike the GPL, the BSD license doesnt require any modifications to be released back to the public. If you make changes and want to keep them "secret" or commercialise them, youre able to.

At the end of the day your biggest worry then is to find other BSD licensed software to provide the final bits of the puzzle like web servers for GUIs etc, or create your own, and then you have a software bundle which you can keep locked away as much as you like.

e.g. JunOS is built on FreeBSD, theyve probably made countless changes to it to suit their needs, and they are rightly able to keep those changes for their own commercial advantage. Some may view this as a negative, but I think its actually a nice option to have if youre a developer.

DaDawgs
Premium Member
join:2010-08-02
Deltaville, VA

1 edit

1 recommendation

DaDawgs to wtm

Premium Member

to wtm
Should he be banned? Maybe he is telling the truth? All sorts of vendors routinely violate the GPL. I'm not saying Ubi did because I have absolutely no clue with respect to that. I'm just asking, why should he be banned?

Does Ubiquiti release the complete source code for their platform? We know absolutely that their platform is based upon the GPL, period, end of sentence. That license requires them to release everything WHICH THEY DID NOT WRITE THEMSELVES... Maybe they just forgot that part....

I dunno. This whole thing reminds me of the whole DDWRT line of bullsheit which made a lot of money for some PERSON who decided that Sveasoft broke some law? Right...

Well, whatever...

Brano
I hate Vogons
MVM
join:2002-06-25
Burlington, ON

Brano to Shaman

MVM

to Shaman
This got me curious and I've checked »www.ubnt.com/download/ ... GPL downloads are there.

DaDawgs
Premium Member
join:2010-08-02
Deltaville, VA

DaDawgs

Premium Member

Does what they release look like everything they have not written themselves? I'm betting it does... but there will always be someone who says it is not.

DDWRT will not be questioned, even though they should be.
raytaylor
join:2009-07-28

raytaylor to Shaman

Member

to Shaman
We need to accept that ubiquiti is not the little guy any more.
Ubiquiti is now the big guy. They are going to start acting monopolistic
wolfcreek
join:2003-12-02
Pagosa Springs, CO

wolfcreek to Shaman

Member

to Shaman
Mikrotik, DDWRT, Ubiquiti, and many others all violate the spirit if not the letter of the GPL license.

If your proprietary binaries directly interface (library linking, etc) with the underlying GPL code and do not use the provided API's then it is a violation not to release them. If you modify the source GPL file you must release if it is used commercially. GNU.org considers proprietary closed drivers which most likely link with the kernel at a minimum to be a violation.

With Mikrotik it is hard to tell as you have to pay them for a cd to get there sort-of package of GPL code. Ubiquiti most likely uses the open source polling TDMA package to base AirMax on.

All of these vendors dance around the GPL requirements but they know no one is really going to force the issue. It is hard to keep track of as some items as you would need to prove that their binary is linking to GPL code.
OHSrob
join:2011-06-08

OHSrob

Member

said by wolfcreek:

Mikrotik, DDWRT, Ubiquiti, and many others all violate the spirit if not the letter of the GPL license.

If your proprietary binaries directly interface (library linking, etc) with the underlying GPL code and do not use the provided API's then it is a violation not to release them. If you modify the source GPL file you must release if it is used commercially. GNU.org considers proprietary closed drivers which most likely link with the kernel at a minimum to be a violation.

With Mikrotik it is hard to tell as you have to pay them for a cd to get there sort-of package of GPL code. Ubiquiti most likely uses the open source polling TDMA package to base AirMax on.

All of these vendors dance around the GPL requirements but they know no one is really going to force the issue. It is hard to keep track of as some items as you would need to prove that their binary is linking to GPL code.

Im pretty sure ubiquiti's MAC and PHY are based upon the $50,000 close sourced Atheros drivers you have to sign an NDA to get, not opensource drivers.

If they forked ATH9K released a commercial product and didn't release the changes they made to the 802.11 mac for airmax to work and phy are they would be seriously breaking the law.

edit: That said few people seem to care when an embedded device manufacture violates the GPL it seems its just part of that type of business.
lutful
... of ideas
Premium Member
join:2005-06-16
Ottawa, ON

1 recommendation

lutful

Premium Member

said by OHSrob:

Im pretty sure ubiquiti's MAC and PHY are based upon the $50,000 close sourced Atheros drivers you have to sign an NDA to get, not opensource drivers.

The HAL accounts for maybe 5% of a complete WISP firmware.

The rest of their application, and even their TDMA protocol, are probably derived from public domain projects. The best way to verify would be for the open source foundation to sue Ubiquiti, and other suspected GPL violators, and demand to see the complete source code.

Mikrotik also uses GPL code, but it actually has a very long history of in-house firmware development. They started selling RouterOS on X86 for wired networking, long before getting into wireless. Mikrotik may have been the first to integrate the Prism PCMCIA card driver in 2002, and Atheros miniPCI card driver in 2003.

My company Radialink was probably the second. We also used GPL stuff, but had to modify a lot of code. I still have the backups from late 2003. At that time, Airaya and D-Link used VxWorks firmware for Atheros.

Ubiquiti firmware group came many years later - remember that they originally made SR2/SR5 cards, not embedded systems. Anyway, my hunch is that Ubiquiti in-house firmware developers are mainly integrating code and developing GUI.
OHSrob
join:2011-06-08

OHSrob to Shaman

Member

to Shaman
I don't recall seeing their 802.11 mac in the kernel source folder in the 5.3 SDK.

I figured Atheros gave them a partial implimentation and they just finished it.

I think I should look over their GPL source they are probably really breaking the law.

John Galt6
Forward, March
Premium Member
join:2004-09-30
Happy Camp

John Galt6

Premium Member

If true, a revelation like that could collapse their stock price.
OHSrob
join:2011-06-08

2 edits

OHSrob to Shaman

Member

to Shaman
It looks like ubiquiti has forked off madwifi just like Lutful's Y-MAX project, judging by the contents of the GPL archive.

edit: I still haven't found the TDMA portions I wanted but I have found quite a few patches that make what I am working on easier.

edit: This GPL archive seems to be incomplete.

edit: It seems madwifi uses BSD and GPL v2 licensing.

Im no expert in licensing but if the mac portion is GPL2 they got a serious problem on their hands by not including airmax in the gpl tarball.
lutful
... of ideas
Premium Member
join:2005-06-16
Ottawa, ON

1 recommendation

lutful

Premium Member

Click for full size
said by OHSrob:

It looks like ubiquiti has forked off madwifi just like Lutful's Y-MAX project, judging by the contents of the GPL archive.

After our discussion, I went digging and found the original backups from 2004.

My brilliant U of Waterloo student researcher actually wrote EVERYTHING from scratch for the minimalist "uIP" operating system on Ubicom IP2K cpu. I am more amazed now than I was when I wrote his glowing co-op report!

Our original madwifi based firmware was developed by another student for PC Engines WRAP/X86 board and CM9 cards. I am looking for his backups, and will put them up on a website.