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
The replies of Darius Jack lead me to believe it is a bot of some kind.
@Martin,
calm down and read what protection to software developers is provided under patent law,
already succesfully tested and verified by Google, Microsoft, Nokia and others to name just few, to work.
If you live local, your understanding of the problem is local, so the solution provided is locally limited.
Visit website of USPTO one day and read about software patents.
I exactly replied Chris vs. Chris Anderson since at public places, every vote counts only once.
I recently studied GNSS and GPS ionospheric error in Australia to verify claims by manufacturers of high presicion GPS boards.
GPS ionospheric error in Australia ranges from 1 to 10 metres in 24h cycle.
If you are aware of alike study done on other continent, please let me know.
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Comment by Martin 8 hours ago
@Darius, you really seems to be the Jack of all trades. You've posted into many of the top discussions claiming to be an expert of a number of fields ranging from GNSS to software licences. Please stop this nonsense.
The Chris posting in this thread is not Chris Anderson.
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Chris, it might be helpful if you changed your screen name to at least have an Underscore Second Initial after your name, so that it's more clear that you're not Chris Anderson (assuming your name doesn't start with A...) This is technically possible, I originally used R_Lefebvre until people were confusing me with Randy, so I changed it.
HI @Alas
Quoted from above:
"Chris, you did indeed admit the badge was applied too hastily. So did Rob. Yet, you both have been complacent in having it persist on William Davidson's avatar all this time"
You are aware that I have no say on if this is on his avatar, to be clear I am a completely different Chris to Chris Anderson. I am a participant of the site.
If you are inferring that my support has meant his badge stays I'm sure that William will disclose what he is comfortable doing. Like I've said there is always different version of the truth, in the long run I'm sure it will get settled.
On the surface it appears that Craig has tried to work with UAV Solutions staff and got no joy, so they've taken this step and I support UAV Solutions being involved otherwise it would be a witch hunt. Who in your view should be the jury as people seem to think that this is a trial and has rules of evidence that should be applied. This is real life, yes this may have commercial impacts, that is something for both parties to think about. So far an allegation has been made, a badge has been applied and if done in error I'm sure it will be removed - with a public apology.
From my understanding this wasn't just @Craig deciding this, it has gone to a group of people to see if it was too harsh. If it was just Craig then yes I agree, but from earlier posts it appears that it was a group of people who were consulted.
To be fair I'll ask Craig the only question that could put his request for the source in question:
@Craig, were you given a copy of the binary from a UAV Solutions Client? Or has a customer requested the source and been knocked back. If yes then it's clear cut you have a right (or the customer does) to a copy of the source code as per the GPL v3. If not then it might be hard to press this point.
People should give them a chance to respond, so far over 95% of the posts (including mine) are not the active parties in this.
Regards,
Chris
Alas Kindle:
While several hours of time may be "very quick" on a geologic time scale, it's actually quite a long time on an internet forum time scale.
My comment was made based on a lack of information. 1) I'm still trying to figure out what the GPL actually says (as are many, apparently) and 2) I did not have the information presented recently, that in fact some of UAVS's customers have complained that UAVS is not supplying the source code on request, as is very definitely required by the GPL.
UAVs need to do the following....
Release the drawings of the Pixhawk derivative....
Release the code to mission planner modifications....
Release the code to the Ardupilot modifications....
May I suggest an open source page on their site?
It has been verified that they have refused to put this in a verifiable location.
When this is cleared up, we will all move on.
Craig has my 100% support on this.
I am one of the hardware engineers on the PX4 hardware team. I am active on the Ardupilot team. I am on the Board as a Silver member of Dronecode.
And again I stand behind Craig 100% on this.
UAVS are soliciting funds for their work on this system. So either they have a lot to give back, or they have taken a lot and can afford to support some development. Either way, they will be welcome.
@Alas, do you have any idea what kind of a person Graig Elder is?
People who have been in this community long enough have some sense of the developers motives and personalities.
My take is that something really nasty happened during the communication with UAVS. I think we will find out what it was if UAVS doesn't do something to remedy the situation.
It is relevant by the fact that your only interest in this community is to support William, and could not care less for help on others issues happening on this site, whilst member like Craig have been active with more than 1000 (thousand) contributions, and that's without his contribution as developper. But hey it's an open forum, so please keep your meaningful contributions coming...
Paul, yes, I was pushed to register and write my first comment after reading Craig Elders' blog post. I don't see how your ad hominem attack is relevant here.
Hi Alas,
I have seen from your home page that all the contributions you have made so far on dyidrones is on this particular thread, shows how heavily involved you are in the community.....
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