I've been in contact with Bill Berkman, the Chairman and CEO of
ClearSight, as well as someone on their staff. Here's the timeline of
our interaction so far:
January 7, 2004:
I sent email to info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, and
sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx concerning the violation. I also left
voicemail with their automated attendant system.
January 8:
Bill Berkman contacted me by telephone. I expressed my concerns about
the license. He said they would prepare a formal response.
January 27:
I called Bill Berkman again. He said they were still working on the
response.
February 26:
Someone on ClearSight's staff (who wishes to remain private) contacted
me about the situation. We spoke on the phone at length. I detailed
my concerns and followed up with an email.
March 1:
I received a postal letter from Bill Berkman explaining their
position, which matches what's on their web site: That by
encapsulating Ethereal in a DLL, they are not bound by section 2
of the GPL.
March 2:
I sent a postal letter to Bill Berkman disagreeing, and asking that
they cease distribution of ClearSight Analyzer until the issue is
resolved. I'd be happy to forward a PDF copy to anyone interested.
It's been almost 60 days since ClearSight was first contacted. They've
certainly taken their time addressing this issue, considering the risk
they're taking with the Analzyer source code base.
Devin Heitmueller wrote:
Is there any new info on this? Have you heard back from ClearSight at all?
Devin
-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald Combs [mailto:gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wed 1/7/2004 6:10 PM
To: Ethereal-Dev
Cc:
Subject: [Ethereal-dev] [Fwd: ClearSight Analyzer's use of Ethereal decodeengine]
I received this email earlier today. After downloading a demo of
ClearSight Anayzer, it's clear that they've DLL-ified Ethereal and call
it directly from their application. A copy of the default decode engine
(DecodeEngine.dll) resides in "DecodeEngines\Ethereal\". A string
analysis of the DLL indicates that it contains Ethereal's dissector code
plus epan, and possibly more of Ethereal's components.
I sent an email to ClearSight, and am waiting for a response.
-------- Original Message --------
In the process of evaluating network analyzers, I recently came across a
product called ClearSight Analyzer from
http://www.clearsightnetworks.com. ClearSight clearly uses the Ethereal
decode engine in their commercial product. They acknowledge this fact
and don't try to hide it. Their product is not GPL'd, so isn't this in
violation of Ethereal's GPL?
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