On Wednesday, April 07, 2004 10:34 PM [EST], Guillermito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello to all members of this list. > > I was wondering if a company has the right to distribute a scanner > they probably coded, which uses the ClamAV virus signatures database, > and provide this package for free - as in free beer - but not under > the GPL, without source code, and even more, with a home-made licence > that explicitely forbids any reverse engineering or analysis. In other > words, a closed software under a non-GPL compliant licence. > > This french company sells a generic antivirus, and distributes this > scanner tool, well hidden on their website, to clean computers before > installation of their own product. You can find this tool here: > > http://www.tegam.fr/download/tools/vdetect.zip > > > > [DISCLAIMER] > > There is a conflict of interest here. I am currently sued by this > company because I published an analysis of their anti-virus product, > showed a few flaws, and debunked their claim of stopping "100% of > known and unknown viruses", on my website. The publication of exploits > to demonstrate my theorical analysis was labelled as "counterfeiting", > and I am currently indicted for that in France. More info on my > website: http://www.guillermito2.net/archives/2004_03_25e.html > I'm not hiding that if this company actually violates the GPL, it will > help my own case, by showing who acts in good faith and who does not. > > [/DISCLAIMER] Regardless of what ClamAV is licensed as, is the database being published under the GPL as well? Is it public domain? We've run into very similar type questions with the AHBL stuff - what are we going to publish our database information as? Our standard license is either GPL or BSD. Now, there is a difference between the AHBL and the ClamAV database - the AHBL database was pretty much completely constructed by me, and as I own the SOSDG/AHBL, I also own the database, so I can decide alone, or delegate that decision to someone else in my group, on what it will be released as. However, there is alot more people working on ClamAV and its database then just one group - so who technically owns the ClamAV virus database? That would be the person who could act on something like this. If this company is found to be in violation of the GPL, let me know, and I'll see if I can put some heat on them. We've had to smack some people up in the past for breaking licenses on software some of our users developed years ago. -- Brian Bruns The Summit Open Source Development Group Open Solutions For A Closed World / Anti-Spam Resources http://www.sosdg.org The Abusive Hosts Blocking List http://www.ahbl.org ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click _______________________________________________ Clamav-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/clamav-users
