Gizmo5 took the source, removed the copyright and published a modified version

[Pascal Merle]

Hi members,

Gizmo5 took our source, removed all copyrights and published a
modified version on their site!!!

Thanks for your help and support,
Pascal

[Pascal Merle]

The plan is to stop making source code of bugfixes open until the
issue
with Gizmo is resolved. What do you think?

[Isaac Waller]

Good idea. I think it is nice that they use the Sipdroid source code
but they need to totally identify the Sipdroid project as the
copyright owner.

[wavehill]

This is an open source project and we don't need to shut the openness
due to some
bad actors.

Shaming gizmo5 by notifying media (tech. bloggers especially those
ones that are covering
guava) about GPL violations may be another avenue to pursue.

On Jul 20, 5:21 pm, Pascal Merle <pmerl...@googlemail.com> wrote:

[Ray Bellis]

Shaming gizmo5 by notifying media (tech. bloggers especially those
ones that are covering
guava) about GPL violations may be another avenue to pursue.

I agree.

In the first instance I'd try to get them listed on http://gpl-violations.org/

Ray

[Jason]

> Shaming gizmo5 by notifying media (tech. bloggers especially those
> ones that are covering
> guava) about GPL violations may be another avenue to pursue.

Unfortunately most of the popular "tech blogs" cater to an audience
that mostly has no idea what a GPL is. Still, I think this is the most
effective option. Also, there are a couple of alternatives you can
pursue with Google. For example, nosimcard (dot) blogspot (dot) com
and gizmo5news (dot) blogspot (dot) com are hosted at Blogger, which
is a Google service. You could probably pursue a DMCA takedown notice.
Another possibility is contacting Google Voice team. GV can not
forward to sip providers normally. The option to forward to Gizmo is a
special case and likely done via prearranged undocumented api. GV team
might be sympathetic to having that access removed if you contact
them.

While sipdroid's heavy-handed promotion of pbxes puts a bad taste in
my mouth, deliberate GPL violation is clearly on a whole different
level of malignancy altogether.

[Ray Bellis]

> Unfortunately most of the popular "tech blogs" cater to an audience
> that mostly has no idea what a GPL is. Still, I think this is the most
> effective option. Also, there are a couple of alternatives you can
> pursue with Google. For example, nosimcard (dot) blogspot (dot) com
> and gizmo5news (dot) blogspot (dot) com are hosted at Blogger, which
> is a Google service. You could probably pursue a DMCA takedown notice.

A DMCA notice to the blog articles would be completely inappropriate.
DMCA notices should only be used to take down actual infringing
content, not mere news articles that mention it.

> Another possibility is contacting Google Voice team. GV can not
> forward to sip providers normally. The option to forward to Gizmo is a
> special case and likely done via prearranged undocumented api. GV team
> might be sympathetic to having that access removed if you contact
> them.

That might work.

> While sipdroid's heavy-handed promotion of pbxes puts a bad taste in
> my mouth, deliberate GPL violation is clearly on a whole different
> level of malignancy altogether.

sipdroid and pbxes.org are both Pascal's projects. I can't blame him
for wanting to promote pbxes with sipdroid.

Ray

[Jason]

On Jul 21, 9:49 pm, Ray Bellis <ray.bel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> A DMCA notice to the blog articles would be completely inappropriate.
> DMCA notices should only be used to take down actual infringing
> content, not mere news articles that mention it.

Ahh, just noticed that the actual apk is hosted on gizmo5.com

> sipdroid and pbxes.org are both Pascal's projects.  I can't blame him
> for wanting to promote pbxes with sipdroid.

Sure, but generally open source projects that become excessively tied
to commercial business plans are frowned upon (see Novell). Completely
within the open source framework, but frowned upon. But this is a
different discussion for a different day.

[Isaac Waller]

From Uservoice (guava.uservoice.com):

The source code is available at: gizmo5.com/guava.tgz

However, this is alpha code with debugging code and other known issues (like not reregistering when wifi changes). So you'll probably want to wait until it's an official release to use it.

Somebody asked for the source, and they gave it. So I think now they are complying with the GPL.

-- Isaac Waller
http://www.siriusapplications.com/

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[Jason]

The developer at Gizmo5 behind Guava has released source:

http://nosimcard.blogspot.com/2009/07/phone-without-paying-phone-company.html
http://gizmo5.com/guava.tgz

Still don't see any GPL or links to GPL on any of the websites
associated with Guava. Ostensibly the GPL is referenced in the actual
program, but one cannot view the license before beginning usage, as
the first activity displayed is the configuration screen.

[Antonioams]

Pascal,

Did send an email to the license-...@gnu.org? This is an area of
Free Software Foundation to help the copyright owner against license
violations.

Thanks

On Jul 21, 2:06 pm, Jason <jas...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The developer at Gizmo5 behind Guava has released source:
>

> http://nosimcard.blogspot.com/2009/07/phone-without-paying-phone-comp...http://gizmo5.com/guava.tgz

[Pascal Merle]

Good ideas!

I remember Ray had similar problems with his open source, the offense
against his software was a bit milder.

To be able to handle this issue I have set up a wiki page for the
present status.

[Chris DiBona]

Hi Pascal and other Sipdroiders.

A couple of things;

1) The Guava package is not in the android market, they host it on
their site.
2) The about box does give credit, and shows the truncated GPL, noting
the copyright holders including siphone, sipdroid, hughes systique,
andoird and university of parma, it.

That's all I wanted to share at this point. It is kind of mistargeted
in that you dmca'd google as we aren't involved with gizmo5 and we
don't host the app on the android market. Did you email michael
robertson over at Gizmo5? He's all over the internet. Press emails
sometimes sit in limbo at companies.

Good luck and happy hacking..

Chris

[Pascal Merle]

Thanks for your reply, Chris.

1) Yes, I hoped there was any other means of control beyond Market.
Let's keep the request at least preventive in case it gets published
on Android Market. (Another question is if Guava uses Google Voice
according to its TOS.)

2) The users have to jump thru 5 hoops to find out who the copyright
holders are. It took me several hours. That's definitely not the way
to work with open source, and not conforming to the GNU license
requirements.

If you know Michael Robertson's email please let me know. I have
already commented into his blog to get in touch.

[Ray Bellis]

> If you know Michael Robertson's email please let me know. I have
> already commented into his blog to get in touch.

According to the "whois" for gizmo5inc.com he can be reached at
webm...@sipphone.com

Ray

[Chris DiBona]

mic...@michaelrobertson.com usually works fine, I think. (I don't
email him much).

As to point 1, I'm not sure it works that way. IANAL.

As to point #2: This is why google over-complies with the gpl, it's
just too .... prickly :-)

Chris

--
Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
Google's Open Source program can be found at http://code.google.com
Personal Weblog: http://dibona.com

[Ray Bellis]

> 1) Yes, I hoped there was any other means of control beyond Market.
> Let's keep the request at least preventive in case it gets published
> on Android Market. (Another question is if Guava uses Google Voice
> according to its TOS.)

The Market could do with an "object because of copyright violation"
reason alongside the objectionable content reasons.

The version of my enumdroid application that defaults to a.n.other
ENUM tree is still there with Nominet's copyrighted icons despite the
poster saying he'd change them weeks ago :(

Ray

[Michael]

Pascal,

My company recently put up some alpha software called GUAVA. You can
read about it here: http://www.noSIMcard.com

I see you have zealously sent emails to loads of people about our
software
claiming it is in violation of GPL. I appreciate the aggressive
actions in
defense of open source rule following including sending Google a
takedown notice to get us removed from the Android Marketplace.
We're not in the marketplace yet though because the software isn't
reliable enough. (See comment on blog about it setting your phone
on fire if you push too many buttons at once.)

I do want to correct the record though. Gizmo5 is not and never has
been
in violation of the GPL with GUAVA software.

I read on your web site that you say we removed the copyright
information.
That's not true. It's all right in the software. I posted to the web
site above a
screenshot of the About page. It not only lists all the copyrights but
has
references to GPL and says "GUAVA is based on Sipdroid". Not sure how
much clearer that could be.

You complained it's really hard to find copyright information in the
software.
I'm very puzzled by this since the copyright info in the software is
in
the same EXACT spot as it is in SIPdroid. We didn't move it.
We did add ourselves as one of the authors. We left all previous
authors.
Did you look at the About section of the software?

Also, you state that we didn't make the source code available which is
also inaccurate. The source code is at: gizmo5.com/guava.tgz That's
listed in the
support section and I personally responded to emails.

I'm curious about why you didn't email me or the prominent address on
the web site if
you had any concerns. I make my email very prominent. I enjoy hearing
from users.

I'm a big believer and backer of open source software. I've spent
millions of my own
money and more money from companies that I run supporting open source
including
Linux, Firefox, NVU and more. If you're using Firefox now and it does
the red squiggly
underline of spelling mistakes that's a feature I paid to have
developed and then
gave it to Mozilla - just as one tiny example. I have a long history
with open source
since I founded and ran Lindows/Linspire and even before that with
MP3.com
we gave money to a then unknown open source database called mysql.

Since you didn't bother to email the prominent email address on the
web site,
I presume you're just trying to create controversy so more people know
about sipdroid and
pbxes.org - that's cool. No need to disparage a competitor with
inaccuracies though.
In the future why not drop email if you have any questions or
concerns?

On the technical front, there's we've added support for TCP
registration to improve registration
on NATs and routers. We're also putting the registration code into a
background thread so the
software will be more reliable staying registered. As it it, it will
periodically unregister if there's
even the slightest network hiccup and won't reregister or if the wifi
net changes it can fail
registering. We hope to have this done this week.

Finally, I actually tried to send your company email to tell you about
this product in advance, but there is no way to send email to your
company. I tried guessing pas...@pbxes.org and pascal...@pbxes.org
and
both addresses bounced. Then I tried the forum/customer support signup
you have on your web
site is broken. No matter what is entered when signing up, it responds
with "incorrect username/password" so it's impossible to enter a
support ticker or reply to a post in the forum. You might want to
look
into that.

Most importantly have you tried GUAVA? Free calls and SMS messages
without a carrier? Yum!

-- MR

[Isaac Waller]

I think everyone is freaking out. GUAVA seems to be in compliance with
the GPL. The visibility of the source code could be improved though.

@Micheal - your app is nice but your UI is *horrible*. If you need
somebody to do UI work I would gladly oblige.

> company. I tried guessing pas...@pbxes.org and pascal.me...@pbxes.org

[Jason]

The GPL needs to be presented to the user before or on first use of
the program.

Also, you wanted to contribute in a meaningful way, why not just
contribute patches to sipdroid? If you're going to fork the project,
at the very least change the package name.

[Jason]

Correction: that was supposed to be in reply to Michael, not Isaac.

[Michael Robertson]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Isaac Waller <isaacwaller.com@gmail.com> wrote:

@Micheal - your app is nice but your UI is *horrible*. If you need
somebody to do UI work I would gladly oblige.

 The UI is not the final UI which is why we called it 'alpha' software. GUAVA adds lots of new capabilities including:

- making googleTalk and Skype calls
- Send SMS messages
- Read voicemail/read SMS messages (well navigate to web places to do this)

We crammed all that into the main screen.

If you have any suggestions on the UI I would be happy to use them. You can email me at: mic...@michaelrobertson.com

-- MR

[Michael Robertson]

Jason,

The copyright code for sipdroid and guava are in the SAME EXACT location. If you have a complaint with Guava then you can lodge the same complaint with sipdroid. This is because we didn't change how or where the copyright or GPL info is presented from how sipdroid does it. I'm still not sure why Pascal emailed many people saying we had removed copyright info and "stolen" his software. All of them seemed to be able to find my email address (on every page of my blog) and emailed me personally, but Pascal did not.

I suspect Pascal is upset because sipdroid defaults to pbxes.org and GUAVA defaults to Gizmo5 which is why he went on jihad of email campaign, DMCA takedown notices, calls for boycott in record time. We had to do change the defaults proxy because all of the features we added only work for Google Voice and that service only works with Gizmo5.

As for contributing patches, I'm not sure that makes sense because the features we're adding (Googletalk calls, Skype calls, free US calling, free US SMS, etc) only work if you're using Google Voice and Gizmo5. Since no other SIP service does Gtalk, Skype, SMS, free US calls in a similar fashion the code would be irrelevant to all others. Besides Pascal would decide not to include it because Gizmo5 is a competitor (which is entirely his perogative).

You know that Pascal invests his company's dollars to build sipdroid to get more customers for pbxes.org which is why he's so passionate about it. I thank him for choosing to spend his company's money in this fashion and I sincerely hope it grows his business. I want him to be successful. I want SIP to win. If SIP players like pbxes.org and Gizmo5 win then the world will be in a better place. However just like he's standing on the shoulders of mjsip, we're doing the same with sipdroid. That's the benefit of opensource.

I'm a huge believer in open standards and my business history has been MP3, Linux and SIP, battling against proprietary purveyors (and DRM) at every step. For those reading this who use SER->OpenSER->OpenSIPS Gizmo5 was a financial supporter of that project as well.

-- MR

[Pascal Merle]

Stop spamming this list by extra long postings please. It's for
Sipdroid Developers.

> Besides Pascal would decide not to include it because Gizmo5 is a competitor (which is entirely his perogative).

I had already offered him to join. Why is he telling the opposite??
My email to him, did he read it?:

> Concerning the bugs in your alpha software: TCP has been added to Sipdroid last week. An article on NAT traversal, too, among other features. As far as I can see in your source your developer has not improved the code at
all. It might be a good idea to bring the additional Gizmo Features
into Sipdroid (just like
the PBXes Features settings page). Well, this is your decision. I am
open to it but please get above points fixed [copyright box visible
from the beginning, download source link where the binary is] before
going into this.


PS: Now I read of severe security issues with his modified code
(http://nosimcard.blogspot.com/2009/07/phone-without-paying-phone-
comp... ) that doesn't need to be commented any more.

[Michael Robertson]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Pascal Merle <pmer...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Stop spamming this list by extra long postings please. It's for
Sipdroid Developers.

I'm defending myself and my company because you insist on bashing us like the comment below:

 

PS: No I here of severe security issues with his modified code:

http://nosimcard.blogspot.com/2009/07/phone-without-paying-phone-company.html#comments

For those who want to investigate it, please look at this URL:

http://guava.uservoice.com/pages/23533-guava-/suggestions/264346-serious-security-issue-with-guava

Be sure and read the Comments section for the latest information. The take away is that a user pointed out a valid security weakness and it was immediately addressed and a new version made available. This is why we called the software ALPHA and said it could catch your phone on fire. Then we asked people to give us their feedback - good or bad.

And by the way, if you're wondering how this issue got '9 votes' it's because the log file shows one anonymous person voted 9 times (the max you can do).

-- MR

[Poteck]

I want to give my vote in favour of Michael,

Pascal, don´t blame us, you act as a troll, that´s not the way a
developer would act when someone use your code. And for Michael
the same, that´s not the way you could act if you are going to use
his code. What michael does wrong is come out with those marketing/
blog
anounce to the world "now android could make free calls thanks to
Gizmo5 and Gvoice".
Oh man, come on, That´s Marketing in the worse way i´ve ever seen. And
with an
alpha version? Take a while and be more serious please...

Pascal you start the sipdroid as an open source project, so u must
understand what that
exactly means. When we suggest the idea to make sipdroid to be more
compatible
with the SIP RFC, and in that way to ASTERISK, you always said, do it
your self, i could include the code. Ok man, we try to do it, but it
was clear from the begining
that´s not your goal to be more compatible with other IP services.
You are not here to make friends, you are here to push up your
pbx.org
service, and because of that the reaction to the use of your code by
Gizmo5.
Of course michael is here to push Gizmo5 up, so you are much of the
same.





On Jul 22, 9:31 am, Michael Robertson <michael.robert...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Pascal Merle <pmerl...@googlemail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
> > Stop spamming this list by extra long postings please. It's for
> > Sipdroid Developers.
>
> I'm defending myself and my company because you insist on bashing us like
> the comment below:
>
> > PS: No I here of severe security issues with his modified code:
>

> >http://nosimcard.blogspot.com/2009/07/phone-without-paying-phone-comp...

>
> For those who want to investigate it, please look at this URL:
>

> http://guava.uservoice.com/pages/23533-guava-/suggestions/264346-seri...

[Jason]

> The copyright code for sipdroid and guava are in the SAME EXACT location. If
> you have a complaint with Guava then you can lodge the same complaint with
> sipdroid.

It may be in the exact same location in the app, but there are two key
differences:
1) Sipdroid states the license at its primary distribution point
(sipdroid.org) and
2) Sipdroid does not require you to begin meaningfully using the app
to view the
license in the app. Make Guava not default to the configuration on
first startup.

> I suspect Pascal is upset because sipdroid defaults to pbxes.org and GUAVA
> defaults to Gizmo5 which is why he went on jihad of email campaign

Jihad? That's kind of hyperbole isn't it? Until you revealed the link
for the source,
Pascal was perfectly justified in calling Guava a GPL violating
application-- no
GPL or source was published with the blog post announcing it or at the
gizmo
download link.

> As for contributing patches, I'm not sure that makes sense because the
> features we're adding (Googletalk calls, Skype calls, free US calling, free
> US SMS, etc) only work if you're using Google Voice and Gizmo5. Since no
> other SIP service does Gtalk, Skype, SMS, free US calls in a similar fashion
> the code would be irrelevant to all others. Besides Pascal would decide not
> to include it because Gizmo5 is a competitor (which is entirely his
> perogative).

There are ways around this.I think an ideal way would be for sipdroid
to adopt
a plugin architecture that separates its sip engine from more
service-specific features (e.g. Pbxes or Gizmo exclusive
functionality).

[Jason]

Pascal isn't angry that someone is using his code (after all a big
portion of sipdroid is mjsip code), Pascal is angry that Guava was
released with no GPL compliance (link to source alongside binary &
show the GPL license at point of download or first startup). A link to
GPL inside the application as the sole mention is not sufficient-- a
user needs to be able to know what the licensing terms are BEFORE
using the app (ideally before downloading).

[mdm-adph]

Play nice, guys! Competition breeds improvement -- this could be like
the USSR-USA space race. :P Get some cross-licensing agreements like
the big boys do when they have disputes.

[Pascal Merle]

Sometimes reading helps. Concerning this matter section 5 of the GPL
text is very clear, without ambiguity.

<°)))o><
Watch out, Robert is creating some red herrings to draw attention away
from the facts.

@mdm-adph
Cross-licensing is completely off topic. We have taken nothing from
Gizmo, and if checking in some of their changes it would be totally
compliant with GPL. This discussion is about Gizmo violating the GPL
License of Sipdroid.

[Pascal Merle]

Gizmo5 added the missing link for offering the source code. Thanks!

So I declare this issue to be resolved.

For future cases I have added additional terms according to GPL
section 7 for this project to avoid long discussions.