Thanks Thomas for letting us know.
Good to hear that there is at least some progress. I hope I was able to ring the correct bells; and they will manage your request as it should be managed.
As general guidance (I'm not part of the FTF at FSFE - rather the Finnish team -, but as far as I know): difficulties in finding a knowledgeable person seems a rather typical problem, in some companies (others may have open source officers, or similar). Another typical problem is the referral to the supply chain. A GPL-licensee should make the requests to the direct distributor (not its supply chain). Generally it would be good to remain polite, but firm. It is normally not a good idea to make public postings once you have gotten the dialogue opened. While a company may have lacked in what it should have been done already earlier, if they are now making genuine efforts, such efforts may require time. In the interest of complying with free software licenses in more general, it may be a good idea to let them pursue their efforts with their supply chain (if any), even if it takes longer. At least for as long as they are making genuine efforts. If it seems to stall, and not proceed, then perhaps you can notify this list.
Please bear in mind that this is not legal advice; and I'm not _your_ lawyer. Rather what I believe is a good general practice. Perhaps others on this list can comment, if they feel the need.
Best, Martin
Martin von Willebrand, Attorney-at-law, Partner HH Partners, Attorneys-at-law Ltd Bulevardi 7, 5th floor P.O. Box 232, 00101 Helsinki, Finland Tel: +358 9 177 613, Fax: +358 9 653 873 GSM: +358 40 770 1818 martin.vonwillebrand@hhpartners.fi www.twitter.com/mvonwi www.hhpartners.fi Validos ry, Chairman, www.validos.org
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-----Alkuperäinen viesti----- Lähettäjä: "Thomas B. Rücker" [mailto:thomas@ruecker.fi] Lähetetty: 11. syyskuuta 2014 11:13 Vastaanottaja: Otto Kekäläinen; ftf@fsfeurope.org Kopio: finland@fsfe.org Aihe: Re: [Finland] looking for help with GPL "explaining" to Sonera
Hi,
just for the record, after, again, giving Sonera a now formal request with deadlines, they have at least acknowledged, that they are working on getting me the sources.
They have so far to comment on the lack of "written offer" in their product packaging.
Best regards
Thomas B. Ruecker
On 09/11/2014 07:40 AM, Otto Kekäläinen wrote:
Hello legal team,
I haven't got any kind of reply from FSFE side on this - could you please send me a short 'OK' if you have acknowledged this.
2014-09-04 10:34 GMT+03:00 Otto Kekäläinen otto@fsfe.org:
Hello,
As recommended at https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/reporting-fixing-violations I forwarded this report to ftf@fsfeurope.org, they should be most apt to help you.
FTF: Thomas is my friend and he spends a lot of his day work time writing Free Software. Please advice him with this issue. If something needs to be written in Finnish to Sonera, I can write it if I have a template in English to translate.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Thomas B. Rücker" thomas@ruecker.fi Date: 2014-09-04 10:12 GMT+03:00 Subject: looking for help with GPL "explaining" to Sonera
Hi,
thought I'd reach out to you, as you are well established in the Finnish open source community.
Sonera doesn't seem to understand the concept of GPL. When I asked them for the GPL et al. sources of my router a year ago, they refused and pointed to Zyxel. Sure, you _can_ resort to just asking the OEM, but legally the company that sold you the device is on the hook for GPL compliance. I'm currently trying to get a proper contact, as I'm discussing some security issues with NCSC/CERT-FI and Sonera, but that doesn't seem to be going anywhere either GPL wise. For the previous device I just asked Zyxel directly and they were reasonably fast and diligent, once I found the right contact. I was thinking that someone should explain to Sonera legal what all this is, maybe FSFE or such.
Another thing is that there is no indication whatsoever in the package that the device contains GPL and other licensed software. No written note, nothing. Only after you take the CD from the package and go to the last pages of the system integrator manual, you'll find something resembling a GPL notice. I'm unsure, this may legally be still OK, but sure is considered bad style.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on those issues.
Thanks in advance, best regards
Thomas
-- Otto Kekäläinen [] otto@fsfe.org Finnish Team Coordinator [][][] finland@fsfe.org Free Software Foundation Europe || +358 44 566 2204
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