On 9/28/06, Mitul Limbani mitul@enterux.com wrote:
Hello,
Nagarjuna and other folks. I know of a firm named Elitecore Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (the popular CyberOAM fame) from Ahemdabad, they are using all the GPL products without distributing source code. They are using Squid as proxy cache server + Linux Kernel and number of utilities that comprises of an entire Linux Operating System, and have been encrypting the entire OS install CD without any mention of source code download from any of their website.
I would like few other senior members from GPL Violation committee to demand further clarification with this origanization.
I might be stating the obvious here but using GPL licensed software and making changes and using them internally (like within a company) is okay. Google, Yahoo, Amazon and other companies does this and this is not a violation of the GNU GPL license. Also providing a hosted service such as hardened FTP server space (with patches whose source code is not available) also does not fall under the purview of the GNU GPL license. It is perfectly legal to do that.
However if the company is (re-) distributing the binaries then they must provide access to the source code. This access can be in different ways such as via a source code cd, webserver or FTP server within reasonable amount of time since distributing the binary. If they do not do this then they are in violation.
You can report violations to license-violation@gpl-violations.org. As far as I know, Harald Welte (of netfilter fame) works on it part-time so there might be a delay in the reply initially. Also I am not sure if you are planning to sue them, whether GPL-violations might be able to monetraily help and that too in India.
But do go ahead and report this violation. For all you know it might be precedent setting in India.
-- Vinayak