GPL2 Lincense breaching in Wildfire source code

Openfire Openfire Support
1

Dear Sir or Madam,

My name is Artur Hefczyc.

I am maintainer of Tigase project - free and open source

Jabber/XMPP server written in Java.

I have just found some source code copied over from

my project to your Wildfire server repository.

As I am working on free and open source project I have

no objections that you use my code and I am happy to

see that you find it useful.

I have, however to insist that you retain original

copyright note in those files and add me to the

Wildfire AUTHORS file. Adding comments to source

code and Javadoc is not enough to claim authorship

for the code.

The 2 files in discussion are:

TLSWrapper.java

TLSStatus.java

They can be found in both my source repository:

http://server.tigase.org/browser/trunk/src/tigase/io

and your repository:

http://www.jivesoftware.org/fisheye/browse/svn-org/wildfire/trunk/src/java/org/j ivesoftware/wildfire/net

Before any discussion starts which files are older let

me mention that about 2 years old copy of my repository

is stored on dev.java.net site and these 2 files are

also available there:

https://tigase.dev.java.net/source/browse/tigase/src/tigase/io/

with best regards

Artur Hefczyc

–

http://www.tigase.org/

2

(First, please note that I’'m not affiliated with Wildfire or Jive Software in any way)

Unlike the BSD license, the GPL doesn’‘t have an advertizing clause, so they don’'t have to include you in the AUTHORS file.

However, the real issue is that Wildfire is dual-licensed, since otherwise they couldn’‘t release closed source plugins for it. Dual-licensing isn’‘t allowed when including GPL parts they didn’'t write themselves.

3

anlumo wrote:

Unlike the BSD license, the GPL doesn’‘t have an advertizing clause, so they don’'t have to include you in the AUTHORS file.

Indeed, you are right and actually I don’'t care.

However, the real issue is that Wildfire is dual-licensed, since otherwise they couldn’‘t release closed source plugins for it. Dual-licensing isn’‘t allowed when including GPL parts they didn’'t write themselves.

You are right again here. I know about this but again I don’'t care. I write free/open source code to share so it is OK for me if they use it.

The real issue for me is the copyright notice which has been changed and now it says:

“Copyright (C) 2005 Jive Software. All rights reserved.”

The only thing I care is putting back original copyright notice which is also required by GPL.

This is so important for me because at some point in the future somebody else may find out that there is the same code in Wildfire and Tigase and then he might think that it was me who copied the code. So eventually I could be forced to rewrite my own code. I just prefer to clear things up while I have still kind of proof of ownership.

Artur Hefczyc

4

Artur,

Thanks for your post. Both of those source files were contributed to us by a community member and were not created by core developers on the project. That community member represented the source files to us as original code and did not mention taking any code from Tigase or any other source.

From looking at the code, it’‘s similar enough to look suspicious but also doesn’‘t seem to be a direct rip-off. My guess is that the community member was “inspired” by your code while creating those classes. That may not be a copyright violation, but I’'m disappointed that you were not given proper credit. My apologies.

Wildfire 3.2 has all new I/O code that is based on Mina, so those source files will soon be deprecated. In any case, if you believe that the files are in fact a copyright violation, we’‘ll get them replaced ASAP. I’'ll drop you an email to figure it out one way or another.

Best Regards,

Matt

5

Matt,

Thank you for your post and e-mail.

I am happy to see you are taking this seriously.

I am sure we can together resolve the issue in the way which

is advantageous for both our projects.

with regards

Artur Hefczyc