Software995

[Slug]

Hi,

I've been using your excellent FTP client at home for a while. Recently, my company updated the loadset of all the employees (a few thousand).

In the new loadset i noticed a software suite from a company called Software995. I was suprised to see that all of their products were simply rebranded open source products.

Filezilla was rebranded as ftp995. The "About" screen is not there anymore and the splash says "a software995" product. There's no reference to GPL with the software distribution but i found a reference to it on software995's website : http://www.ftp995.com/faq.html

I was a little upset when i saw this because the Filezilla team and open source teams of other products (that are being rebranded and sold as a suite by software995), deserve to make the money not software995. Judging by the list of customers, Software995 seems to be making a killing without doing any work at all.

Does the GPL allow for this type of rebranding and retailing?

BTW, i will be emailing the dumbass loadset manager at my company who purchased all these open source products.

Regards,

Slug.

[Anders]

Slug,

They apear to be distributing the source code with the binaries. And while this is not the _only_ requirement of the GPL it along with the cascading nature of the liscence (distributors and those that change the code can not alter the liscence), it does apear that they are in complience with the copyright.

This is not to say that people should not be warry of such companies and scrutinize their actions closely. But there is room for such actions within the GPL.

~Anders