Re: Content Filtering
On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 01:45:28PM -0600, Nate Duehr wrote:
> Craig Sanders wrote:
>
>> even so, it would be appreciated if you would answer the following
>> questions:
>
> This person also refused to answer similar questions on a local LUG
> mailing list,
not surprising.
> and the SafeSquid site actively blocks people looking at
> it that use a real (free) Squid proxy to view it.
yeah, i'd already figured that out.
see: http://lists.debian.org/debian-isp/2008/05/msg00013.html
> Freely taking lots of people's hard work on Squid and then disrespecting
> it and the people working on it to sell a product and trying to act like
> the product isn't based on Squid, instead of being open/honest about the
> resulting commercial product being a derivative of the original, isn't
> taken well by most people in the community, Squid developers, packagers,
> users, or otherwise.
ah. ok. so "safesquid" is based on squid, as in a derivative of the
squid source code? are you sure? i didn't realise that. they go to some
length to hide it, and the original claim by "Sean" on this list was
that it wasn't open source but that they have a crippled free version.
do they actually offer or provide source code to their customers?
if not, then they are violating the terms of squid's license (GPL v2 or
later).
i've searched the squid mailing lists and can't see any discussion
of safesquid. a few user questions asking about it, but no answers.
safesquid also seems to be integrated with other GPL-licensed programs
(incl. clamav and mysql). if they distribute them together with
safesquid, then that is more than just an aggregation as mentioned in
clause 2 of the GPLv2 (and clause 5 of the GPLv3), and they are also
violating the license terms of those programs. mysql are particularly
keen on enforcing their license terms.
this, of course, also applies to squid. if safesquid isn't actually
a derivative of squid (i can't tell for sure, their web site doesn't
say), then it is still bound by the GPL if they distribute it along with
squid....just like mysql & clamav (but even more so), it's too tightly
integrated with squid to be a mere aggregation on the same distribution
media.
the GPL Violations people may be able to help with all of that.
http://www.gpl-violations.org/
craig
ps: i've got a particular interest in and fondness for squid. i've been
using it for 12+ years, and i was the person who first packaged it for
debian back in 1996.
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
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