
Ubiquiti and GPL: When companies use GPL against each other, our community loses - walterbell
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/02/cambium-ubiquiti-gpl-violations/
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jacknews
I'm looking at buying a home AP (I like the idea of the AP being seperate to
the router, on PoE etc), but this really puts me off ubiquiti.

What are good alternatives?

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tga
How about a repeater like TP-Link RE650? No PoE though.

~~~
shoo_pl
Repeaters are the _worst_ choice of all.

Repeaters are put where your signal is already low (not right to the router's
antenna). This means they will just repeat signal that is already low, and the
further you get from repeater itself the signal will get even worse.

Ie. You put repeater where your signal is at 50%. When you stand near it with
your phone, it will show full wifi, but it will be just at 50% of the original
one. Then you move away from repeater and you see that your signal is at 50%,
which in reality means it's just 25% of the original... so yea, that sucks.

~~~
tga
Maybe I should have clarified: the RE650 is marketed as a repeater but it has
an ethernet port and can be used as a simple access point.

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shakna
> We have found that neither company complies properly with the GPL.
> Specifically, in our analysis of the facts, we have found that both Cambium
> and Ubiquiti fail to provide any source code for their respective routers
> and access points, even when we repeatedly asked over the course of several
> weeks, starting more than 30 days ago.

Unless sfconservancy first purchased a router, I don't believe that the GPL
forces them to hand over the source code.

The mentioned GPL in the article is v2, so lifting from there, the valid parts
are probably:

> a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source
> code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on
> a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

> b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to
> give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically
> performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
> corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1
> and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

No part of the GPL, as far as I'm aware, requires distribution to anyone who
isn't a customer.

~~~
MertsA
Also, while Ubiquiti is failing to provide the source code for AmpliFi, they
do comply in other areas. Their claim that they don't provide the GPL licensed
code at all is flat out false.

[https://dl.ui.com/firmwares/edgemax/v2.0.x/GPL.ER-e300.v2.0....](https://dl.ui.com/firmwares/edgemax/v2.0.x/GPL.ER-e300.v2.0.6.5208554.tar.bz2)

All you have to do is click on "GPL Archive" on the download page for the
firmware.

~~~
vetinari
Where do you see the link "GPL Archive"?

I wanted to download the archive for Unifi nanoHD, the GPL archive is
mentioned in the download blurb, but there's no link to it and the normal
download shows classic proprietary EULA, including no reverse engineering.

~~~
MertsA
I thought they were compliant for UniFi AP firmware but not 100% sure on that.
I've seen in the past where upon a new release being published they would
forget to update the GPL archive on the site. Just email support@ui.com and
they do have it internally. At the very least I found a current copy on the
downloads page for EdgeMax and I've seen others mention it for UniFi, mFi, and
airMax. The only thing Ubiquiti seems to be openly flaunting the GPL on is
AmpliFi where I've personally emailed them, escalated the request to their
"Development team" and received a response more or less equating to "go pound
sand".

They seem to be skirting their requirements in not providing the full git
repository for the GPL portions which might be a bit of a gray area but AFAIK
the GPLv2 stipulates "The source code for a work means the preferred form of
the work for making modifications to it." which I would think would encompass
the git repo as well but IANAL.

In the past they also refused to provide the source code for their modified
version of uboot claiming some nebulous security reasons but that stopped a
little while back.

~~~
aidenn0
It does not include the VCS. Gnu did not make their VCS publicly readable for
many of their projects back in the day.

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seva
For historical context please see:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170430232455/http://libertybsd...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170430232455/http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/)

and

[https://web.archive.org/web/20161209121359/http://libertybsd...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161209121359/http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/copyrightholder.txt)

These specific issues have been resolved...

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mikece
What GPL projects are Ubiquity using? I would have thought they would be using
something FreeBSD derived as they sell networking gear which leads me to
believe that whatever the infringement entails it’s not related to the core
networking components or software.

~~~
marcan_42
Ubiquiti's stuff is all based on Debian Linux. You can even SSH in, enable the
upstream repos, and apt-get stuff. But they patch a bunch of packages and of
course the kernel is their own build for their hardware.

