I noticed earlier today that William Davidson was promoting UAV Solutions as a place to purchase telemetry radios. Just as Tridge called out Paul Whitespy from Ready to Fly Quads http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/an-open-letter-to-paul-from-witespy as a license violator I want to make people aware that UAV Solutions is one of the most prolific violators of the open source licenses we use in Ardupilot, Pixhawk, and PX4.
UAV Solutions violates the GPL License on Mission Planner and Ardupilot and they removed Michael Oborne's name from Mission Planner and rebranded it as their own software.
I have spoken with UAV Solutions many times and they have no interest in respecting Michael's work or the efforts of the dev team. They have no interest in respecting the licenses and there is no reason for them to change the way they do business because people buy from them and keep them in business.
Please support the companies who support this project and who respect the developers and the people who have made this project possible. UAV Solutions is not one of those companies.
One of the dev team had a suggestion of creating a badge for open source violators. Mr Davidson you are the first person to be awarded the badge.
Comments
@Rob,
I exactly followed your state of mind expressed by
"
The license also requires any time the software binaries are distributed (ie: installed on systems being sold complete) that the recipient be made aware of the fact they are using open source code, and must be given that source."
..
"
I'd agree, most users are not interested in the Source Code. But that does not absolve the distributor from the legal requirement to provide the Source Code. "
You are exactly right.
I have studied open source applications for Android.
Application is promoted, ready for download and install
but sources sit at some secret place and I was required to ask many times
to get access to open source, if any.
At Nokia's Maemo tablet project I have learned how a really open source, old-school group developed software project can turn into one-man proprietary software product.
So in practice, what was once open-source group developed project can easily turn
into one-man proprietary, branded product, since group interest is not protected.
I live on Anddroid devices (10 inch Android tablet) and branding is a standard in case
of smartphones, tablets.
I get branded GUI overlay made of ads, logos by third parties not related to Android dev team.
I am really sorry to admit, but open source key developers have never got paid for the job done.
Credits are just names.
@Craig Regarding violating the GPL; what's happening on the BirdsEyeView/FireFly6 case and the VTOL code? The open source violator badge will look a bit out of place on the DroneCode member page...
@William Davidson, if you have the git source repository of Mission Planner, you can easily put that up on bitbucket.org/github.com I'd suggest that course of action
@Jethro, I appreciate your interest with Dronecode. Every company that bases its business model around our open source hardware and software you should become a member.
In the mean time please take a few moments and fill out the hardware survey that I posted a few days ago http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/autopilot-needs-survey
+ 1 for Craig
@OG I think you better read the credits over at https://pixhawk.org/credits as far as who designed Pixhawk
Yes Rob, I am asking William why does he not publish the code as he is supposed to do if he does not have a problem.
and yes Rob, I fully agree with you that nevertheless most of open source code users do not care about source code the distributors are still legally binded to provide such source code
@ Darius : if you modify the banner/title/credits is it not a modification of source code ?
Paul: Is your comment directed at William?
Darius: What you're saying makes no sense. Linux users have no interest in binaries? What are they getting then?
Binaries are compiled code. I think what you want to state, is that most users are not interested in the Source Code. (seems an odd mistake to make for somebody involved in IT Forensics?) I'd agree, most users are not interested in the Source Code. But that does not absolve the distributor from the legal requirement to provide the Source Code.
Sorry Rob,
you are not correct.
99.99% of Linux users show no interest in the binaries and neither download binaries nor look for binaries since binaries go do developers like you and number of developers vs. number of users don't match.
What is a novelty is branding or rebranding of Open Source product.
As IT forensic expert I have been involved in copyrights violation cases by a court, public prosecutor's office or law enforcement officers
but branding, rebranding of Open Source Software is still a novelty to me.
Let me know your opinion.
So why don't you ?
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