My most immediate question, before even reading the feature set, was why they forked in the first place. I had to do some digging (ie: click multiple links and read a couple different pages to find what I was looking for), so to save others time, here's the why:
We had technical reasons to fork. As much as we love the functionality/feature set of pfSense, we do not enjoy the code quality and anarchistic development method. We like structure, achievable goals set for
[Disclaimer: I am a pfSense dev of many years and an ESF Employee] The bulk of that notice is the very definition of FUD.
First: Fear of going closed source. pfSense was never "closed source" (any part of it), and was never not "freely available" despite what they attempt to claim about policy changes. The only time the build tools were inaccessible was for a couple days while the repo was being moved to a private git server. (And it's since been moved back to github, and later made obsolete when the build pr
As a user (still on pfsense) who watched it all go down, I'm going to scream BS. ESF basically shut down the build tools and went *COMPLETELY DARK* for almost two weeks as I recall it. Not responding to anybody, and basically saying "give us time to figure out what we're going to do". You guys were pissed that there were third parties selling hardware when that was your primary source of revenue, and nobody had any idea what your plans were.
After much outcry from the community, things slowly started o
The problem was not people selling hardware including an unmodified version of pfSense. That's fine and always has been. The problem was people taking pfSense, modifying it in unknown ways, building their own copy and selling the result as still being pfSense, which it wasn't at that point. It was a trademark violation to do that. That and some others were using the trademark inappropriately in various ways on their web sites. See http://m0n0.ch/wall/list/showm... [m0n0.ch] for some more background (it's been posted elsewhere but I had that link handy)
That's like someone buying Coke, adding their own unknown ingredients, re-bottling it, and selling it as Coke. I doubt Coke would be very happy about that, either. Same thing with Mozilla and Firefox vs Iceweasel. The same resolution there applies here as well. Name the product something different and clearly distinct, removing the name "pfSense" and logo, but keeping the copyright/license notices, and then there would not have been a trademark issue.
We had some vendors that were making some really weird changes and then people were coming to us for support on things we didn't do, questioning why things were broken, etc. Since it was still called "pfSense" and it had code we didn't write and wasn't in our repository, there was a lot of confusion even outside the legal problems...
No fairy tale, not money related in any way. It's a damned-if-you-do, f'd-if you don't trademark scenario.
If you defend your trademark, you catch flack for bringing up legal issues and making people follow the law.
If you don't defend your trademark, you can lose it and be worse off.
It's about protecting what it means to be "pfSense", which has little to do with money and everything to do with making sure people don't pass off their own code as being "pfSense".
If trademark were enforced in the way you claim, Linux wouldn't exist. Nor would FreeBSD. Hell, PFSENSE wouldn't exist. I just don't buy that as the reasoning behind the actions that were taken.
If you make a derivative work for your own private/personal use, there's no problem. If you distribute an unmodified copy (no alterations), that's also OK. But when you make a derivative work and and distribute the result (such as selling a modified version of pfSense pre-installed on hardware) at that point it's, a new product.
Right. You can modify a Linux kernel, release your source to comply with GPL, and make your own distro with its own name but you can't modify the source and then claim the result is the official unpatched Linux kernel or claim it is endorsed by the Linux foundation, which is essentially what was happening, from a trademark point of view.
You absolutely can modify the Linux kernel and still claim it's the Linux kernel. What on earth are you talking about? That happens literally every day.
Distinction is in "official" and "endorsed by", etc. But that's beside the point. You can say it's based on Linux, includes it, etc, but you can't claim to be Linux using their trademarks.
Why they forked (Score:5, Informative)
My most immediate question, before even reading the feature set, was why they forked in the first place. I had to do some digging (ie: click multiple links and read a couple different pages to find what I was looking for), so to save others time, here's the why:
https://docs.opnsense.org/fork... [opnsense.org]
Technical
We had technical reasons to fork. As much as we love the functionality/feature set of pfSense, we do not enjoy the code quality and anarchistic development method. We like structure, achievable goals set for
Re: (Score:4, Informative)
[Disclaimer: I am a pfSense dev of many years and an ESF Employee]
The bulk of that notice is the very definition of FUD.
First: Fear of going closed source. pfSense was never "closed source" (any part of it), and was never not "freely available" despite what they attempt to claim about policy changes. The only time the build tools were inaccessible was for a couple days while the repo was being moved to a private git server. (And it's since been moved back to github, and later made obsolete when the build pr
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
After much outcry from the community, things slowly started o
Re:Why they forked (Score:5, Informative)
The problem was not people selling hardware including an unmodified version of pfSense. That's fine and always has been. The problem was people taking pfSense, modifying it in unknown ways, building their own copy and selling the result as still being pfSense, which it wasn't at that point. It was a trademark violation to do that. That and some others were using the trademark inappropriately in various ways on their web sites. See http://m0n0.ch/wall/list/showm... [m0n0.ch] for some more background (it's been posted elsewhere but I had that link handy)
That's like someone buying Coke, adding their own unknown ingredients, re-bottling it, and selling it as Coke. I doubt Coke would be very happy about that, either. Same thing with Mozilla and Firefox vs Iceweasel. The same resolution there applies here as well. Name the product something different and clearly distinct, removing the name "pfSense" and logo, but keeping the copyright/license notices, and then there would not have been a trademark issue.
We had some vendors that were making some really weird changes and then people were coming to us for support on things we didn't do, questioning why things were broken, etc. Since it was still called "pfSense" and it had code we didn't write and wasn't in our repository, there was a lot of confusion even outside the legal problems...
Re: (Score:3)
No fairy tale, not money related in any way. It's a damned-if-you-do, f'd-if you don't trademark scenario.
If you defend your trademark, you catch flack for bringing up legal issues and making people follow the law.
If you don't defend your trademark, you can lose it and be worse off.
It's about protecting what it means to be "pfSense", which has little to do with money and everything to do with making sure people don't pass off their own code as being "pfSense".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you make a derivative work for your own private/personal use, there's no problem. If you distribute an unmodified copy (no alterations), that's also OK. But when you make a derivative work and and distribute the result (such as selling a modified version of pfSense pre-installed on hardware) at that point it's, a new product.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org... [linuxfoundation.org]
"A trademark should not be used as part of your product name."
https://www.freebsdfoundation.... [freebsdfoundation.org]
"3. If we grant you permission to use the Marks, your
Re: (Score:2)
"A trademark should not be used as part of your product name."
It would help if you quoted the appropriate trademark, which isn't any of the items listed on that page, it's this:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/trademark/sublicense-agreement [linuxfoundation.org]
And makes absolutely no mention of "not modifying the Linux source code" which would be a ridiculous requirement.
Re: (Score:2)
Right. You can modify a Linux kernel, release your source to comply with GPL, and make your own distro with its own name but you can't modify the source and then claim the result is the official unpatched Linux kernel or claim it is endorsed by the Linux foundation, which is essentially what was happening, from a trademark point of view.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Distinction is in "official" and "endorsed by", etc. But that's beside the point. You can say it's based on Linux, includes it, etc, but you can't claim to be Linux using their trademarks.
Closer comparisons are how CentOS can't claim to be Red Hat: https://wiki.centos.org/RedHat [centos.org] and the aforementioned Iceweasel project not claiming to be Firefox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The lines are less clear in cases where the organizations have granted permission to some groups to use their mark in other ways