Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] GPL license question

From: Martin Warnes <martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:50:49 +0100
I agree 100%

... and challenging doesn't even begin to describe it, I've beaten my head head against a brick wall for 5 years trying to get them to agree to release source to the dissectors we've written, even arguing the exact same points you've mentioned.

My boss is converted! lawyers unfortunately are a different species altogether ;-)

Still one day you never know...

- Martin


Ulf Lamping wrote the following on 07/11/2007 09:25 PM:
Martin Warnes schrieb:
Unfortunately this appears to be the case, which is possibly a shame as
I wouldn't call the GPL a shame ;-)
we have a bunch of plug-in dissectors we would willingly release for free download, but it would be a cold day in hell before our lawyers agreed to release the source code, even though I doubt there's anything of proprietry value in there.
Well, there must be a reason that Wireshark contains a lot of dissector code from company's that rarely do this otherwise.

IMHO: If Wireshark would have been released under a BSD style license (which would allow what you think of), we would probably have a lot less dissector variety - as you're probably not the only one thinking this way.


You might argue to your lawyers (or your boss), that releasing the code might be beneficial because of a lot less maintenance and might even be a good marketing thing:
- available to your customers
- being nice to the open source worldIt's not so much that the code is proprietry, more I suspect that they are - ...

You might even be promissed, that there already were some ideas of your executives in the open source direction, and Wireshark code could act as a test how it's working.

However, I know from my own experience, that arguing this way can be challenging ...

Regards, ULFL
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