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
Shame for non creative people to claim pride for other's work, Be innovative, burn some midnight oil and be part of the community. you will benefit more and all.
@Brian, @Craig has tried working with them over a prolonged period of time. This isn't something done on a whim. They have my support in their actions.
I wonder if their customers know they can use the full featured Mission Planner in lieu of the UAV Solutions branded product? Just in case they want additional features that have been removed?
@William, It sounds like your staff may not know your obligations? Some training might be in order. You still can turn this into a win:
1 - Put credits back or consult the dev's on what is reasonable
2 - Ensure the source code is available to any binary recipient (or better yet put it on github so you can give back to the community)
3 - Please inform us how you 'support' the open source community (specifically MP, PX4, etc), if it is just with sales then it sounds like it's more of a benefit to you than the open source community. It's poor form to remove the donation button and then not donate anything to them (assumption on my part - please correct me if I'm incorrect). I know you wouldn't like your branded product to have a donation screen as it will confuse your customers - after all they have paid for it haven't they? If you donated $20 per solution sold I'd be viewing this very differently. I'll be starting a commercial venture this year and I plan to donate additional funds as MP will be my GCS that I'll be using - it's the right thing to do.
Open source or no, it's breathtakingly tacky to slap your logo on someone else's work without first getting express permission from its authors.
And if that weren't enough, from what I can see in that screenshot UAV Solutions even obliterated the donation link!
It's the only protection hardware and software developers have.
It's important that we hold all companies accountable for both the letter and the spirit of the licences!
More on that for a future blog post!
It's very simple to add an open source page with the correct links to a website....
Had the execution (badge)...when does the trial start?
It appears the Kangaroo court is already in session.
I love this bit ...
Comment by William Davidson 14 hours ago
"[...] We do use the opens source code as many here do and make modifications as needed for ourselves or our customers. To that end we then provide the software free of charge to our customers with no NRE for the service. [...]"
Oh Please give us a ballpark figure for the per customer NRE cost for changing the logo :)
regards
Andy
@Craif,
I fully understand you but please read the above
"Dronecode provides a forum to .... "
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Credits
Pixhawk hardware and PX4 software is maintained by an open source volunteer development community (Contact and Credits) and its infrastructure is supported by the Computer Vision and Geometry Lab. We are one of the autopilot projects supported by
the Linux Foundation DroneCode effort."
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Pixhawk Hardware
All software solutions run on the Pixhawk autopilot, designed by the open hardware development team in collaboration with 3D Robotics."
All you need is to collaborate with PX4 core developers from Switzerland.
Otherwise the project may collapse, destroying PX4 software, Pixhawk hardware
since developers can loose interest in providing support.
You should mediate any conflict of interests in private not to make ppl lost.
Alas Kindle, generally I agree with what you're saying. It probably would be better to take a progressive approach.
But, I will point that, Craig has taken a progressive approach with them. It's just that the progressive part was done in private. This is why it appears like the first round is using the nuclear option. There was an attempt at diplomacy, however.
But you're right, it probably makes more sense to be a bit softer when we go public.
@Darius
Dronecode is a Linux Foundation Collaborative project (the address you give is the LF building in San Francisco)
And the PX4 project is one of the flight code options within Dronecode
https://www.dronecode.org/dronecode-software-platform
@Craig,
this is exactly how Internet works.
You are PX4 partner with one web link and lost PX4 partner with another web link
https://pixhawk.org/credits
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Contact and Credits
If you want to contact us, please write to the mailing list (preferred) at the PX4 Users Forum or to the project maintainer Lorenz Meier from the Computer Vision and Geometry Lab, lorenz@px4.io. If you have specific questions you can contact the people listed below directly."
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Project Partners
Our infrastructure is supported by the Computer Vision and Geometry Lab. We are one of the autopilot projects supported by the Linux Foundation DroneCode effort.
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Credits
Software
PX4 Flight Stack – PX4 Firmware Contributors
PX4 Middleware – PX4 Firmware Contributors
NuttX Operating System – Gregory Nutt
Hardware
px4dev, Lorenz Meier, Philip Rowse, Laurens Mackay, Dominik Honegger, Julian Oes, Sam Kelly, Jeff Wurzbach, Craig Elder
Documentation
Wiki: kroimon
3D renderings and manuals – Lorenz Meier, Dominik Honegger and EagleUp."
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Comment by Craig Elder 1 hour ago
@Darius, I think you need the new link http://px4.io/about-us/partners/
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