On 08/20, 2008 at 18:14 GMT-03 was registered on our mailing list a person with the e-mail outbackdingo@gmail.com being his first post 08/20 of the same year.
His first communications with us (either by private e-mail or simple chats made directly to the developers) were referred to problems that had their origin in B.A.T.M.A.N. and that were in the version of Nightwing that he used for his tests.
In the mailing list of B.A.T.M.A.N. shows that it was using the version 0.5beta1 of the firmware as shown in the e-mail sent to our list:
[B.A.T.M.A.N.] Batman gateway lock ups
Outback Dingo
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:03:49 -0700
see pastebin
http://www.pastebin.ca/1194874
pertinent info
dmesg | grep 'batgat loaded'
batgat: [init_module:96] batgat loaded rv1025
uname -a
Linux nightwing 2.6.23.16 #16 Tue Apr 22 20:00:17 ART 2008 mips unknown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# batmand -v
WARNING: You are using the unstable batman branch. If you are interested in
*using* batman get the latest stable release !
B.A.T.M.A.N. 0.3-beta (compatibility version 5)
[...]
We rejoice at that time that our effort in conducting a free firmware was seen by someone on the other side of the world and since that time we had a sporadic dialogue that sometimes was constructive.
In private chat, he says, he was conducting tests on an island from Thailand called Koh Samui in wich he want it (or already was) to provide wireless Internet in various Hotels and Resort of this paradise island.
Since the instabilities reported by OutBackDingo and since that its own test bed was bigger than ours, we decided to investigate the issue and ended up replacing batman-0.3 with BMX (B.A.T.M.A.N.-Experimental) in the version Nightwing 0.6beta1:
* CHANGE: It now uses B.A.T.M.A.N.-Experimental r1157 instead of B.A.T.M.A.N.-0.3-beta.
Who, untill revision 1115, had serious stability issues.
This, the notice that there was a problem with B.A.T.M.A.N., is, that we remember, the only and last input we received from OutBackDingo.
We also knew that he was participating in B.A.T.M.A.N.'s list, OpenWRT and in the IRC of OpenWRT.
(here comes the interesting)
After some time, in March 2009 we arrived by a goolge search at the homepage of a company called OptimWiFi. There we saw that this company announced a new product (ORION-MESH), whose characteristics described there were a copy of pages of our project, only that it had replaced each occurrence of the word Nightwing by Orion.
See the similarities:
Version on the Nightwing's website
|
Version on the Nightwing's website
|
Version on the Nightwing's website
|
Version on the Nightwing's website
|
When searching for references about this company, that indicated been in Koh Samui, we found this:
[10:18] <OutBackDingo> i own a wireless network here
[...]
[10:18] <OutBackDingo> oilinki, yeah im in koh samui
[...]
[10:19] <oilinki> what is the name of your wifi things
[10:19] <oilinki> wifi company
[10:19] <OutBackDingo> OptimWIFI
Wow, familiar faces.
Then we started to look for who was OutBackDingo and we found that his real name is:
Scott Kamp (aka Dingo and of course, OutBackDingo).
(Backup to Prevent deletion in Linkedin)
Given the blatant violation of the copyrighted documents and texts from our website we sent the following e-mail:
Mr Scott Kamp, we have visited the website
http://www.optimwifi.com/orion-mesh/ and we have seen that contains
documentation which is authorship of the LUGRo-Mesh Group [1].
We are glad to see that documentation that we put available on our
website [2] it is useful. We would like to note that this
documentation is copyrighted by the LUGRo-Mesh Group. You can see that
indicated at the bottom of each page.
Currently your website incurs in a violation of copyright because we
were not requested permission for their publication.
With pleasure we can extend you this documentation under the Creative
Common Attribution 2.5 Argentina, which requires you to make reliable
indication of proper authorship.
Also and noting that this information indicates own characteristics of
the firmware Nightwing and seeing that you are about to launch a
firmware with similar characteristics, we want to remind you that the
entire development is under the license GPL version 3, so we expect
that you respect the license if you have based your development or
part of it in ours.
While waiting for your favorable reply we salute you sincerely.
Please include lugro-mesh-dev@lugro.org.ar in you reply.
LUGRo-Mesh Development Team
[1] LUGRo-Mesh is legally represented by the Asociación de Nuevas
Tecnologías (http://www.ant.org.ar) a Nonprofit Civil Association with
legal personality.
[2] http://nightwing.lugro-mesh.org.ar/
http://nightwing.lugro-mesh.org.ar/en/doc/howto_flash.html
http://nightwing.lugro-mesh.org.ar/en/doc/howto_flash_ubiquiti.html
http://nightwing.lugro-mesh.org.ar/en/doc/howto_redboot_thru_lan.html
http://nightwing.lugro-mesh.org.ar/en/doc/main_componnents.html
---> Parts: B.A.T.M.A.N, DNSMasq, OpenDNS, Netfilter/IPTables
http://nightwing.lugro-mesh.org.ar/en/doc/nightwing_characteristics.html
[3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ar/deed.en_GB
His response was:
From: Outback Dingo <outbackdingo@gmail.com>
To:
Cc: lugro-mesh-dev <lugro-mesh-dev@lugro.org.ar>
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Yes, some of the content was a snapshot from the Lugro site and as it is a
work in progress, since this past sunday, there are still modifications
taking place, As it is still being modified to be more specific to Orion,
its content itself will be changing more. I do however appreciate the offer
of its use. As you can see I am still working on the site. And intended on
rewriting alot of the documentation, though leaving some of it intact. I
have no problems giving credit and was rushing to get something up very
quickly. So there will be in the finished version credits for original
documentation placed where credits are due. I hope you can appreciate this
is a work in progress. Ill be sure that you all get credits where it is due.
And if you had noticed I had started to do so in this page
http://www.optimwifi.com/characteristics-89/ . We just havent completed the
final version. I understand both the creative commons and the GPL licenses,
and realize that any GPL code must be post which will be done.
After this, the content was removed and the page was modified, were all references to the Nightwing Project was also removed.
The page changed several times within a few days untill it got into its current contents.
From the foregoing it appears that Mr. Scott Kamp is the owner of the company OptimWifi, whose nickname on the Internet is OutBackDingo or Dingo and whose e-mail is outbackdingo@gmail.com.
This company, OptimWifi, promotes the sale of a firmware called Orion for Ubiquiti devices among others, for the deployment of 0-conf mesh networks.
Seen the attitude of this character we began to monitor his activities by visiting forums, mailing lists, IRC, where he was participating.
At several sites he promoted his own firmware to perform 0-conf mesh networks.
So we got a copy of the firmware that he was promoting, particularly in the forum ROBIN, called Orion.
In the firmware Orion, among other things, you can see that it is simply a ROBIN firmware, that had replaced the "0-config" routines by Nightwing's 0-config script.
Examples:
- The main script (/etc/init.d/nigthwing) has been re-nominated to Orion, it has been changed and all references to the original including the preamble of the license GPLv3 has been removed. This script even contains the same functions, structures, coding style, variable names, comments and even the same jokes.
In addition, several lines are repeated, probably by copy paste mistakes. - It isn't included in the firmware the GPLv3 license text, which must be included as a derivative work of a software released with this license.
- Does not give credit to the developers of Nightwing.
- There is no mention anywhere about the origin of the script.
- The only exception to this is the script nw_conf that is not used.
We can do a lot of comparisons regarding the Nightwing firmware and the Orion firmware, where there are a lot of code that is exactly the SAME. We have seen things that are amazing, but we'll let the reader to make their own deductions from reading the code of the Orion script wich we put available. The script of Nightwing has allways been avilable.
On April 9 at approximately 15:00 (GMT-03), we found in the ROBIN's forum a thread (currently removed, but for which we provide a partial copy) in which a person referred to Scott Kamp on the fact that its firmware was based on Nigthwing.
In his reply, Scott Kamp roundly denies this, trying to move the focus of the discussion away from this fact.
Faced with such hypocrisy and after seen the misleading comments on the originality of the developments involved, the developepment team of the Nightwing Project, issue the following statement:
Mr. Scott Kamp (A.K.A OutBackDingo or Dingo):
It isn't true as you stated in the mentioned posts, that your firmware Orion, it's not based on the firmware Nigthwing.
Your work is a DIRECT derivative work from ours.
You embarrassingly removed nearly all reference to the work we have done. You have violated the license GPLv3 because by removing its preambles and the text of the license which was included in the source code of the firmware Nightwing.
You have removed the copyright of the authors of the sources on which you based your firmware Orion.
You mister Scott Kamp has offended everyone.
You are a disgrace to the Free Software and Open Source community. Where are the words of your own authorship?
[...]I understand both the creative commons and the GPL licenses, and realize that any GPL code must be post which will be done.[...]
Your work is vile copy-paste of the two project (ROBIN y Nightwing).
Get here our deepest disdain for this behavior and we hope that some day you will be able to have some original idea.
We demand that you respect the GPLv3 license that has our code, on which you based your own firmware.
We demand that you respect the copyright of the original developers of the code on which you based your own firmware.
We demand a public apology for what you have done, it must cite this website, and should be published in each place where you have participated (forums, mailing list, as well as on the web of your company).
Meanwhile, we reserve the right to act legally against you and your company for violation of our copyright and the license GPLv3 both documentation and code.
That no doubt you can fit that we'll use all resources at our disposal to ensure that what you have done gets known at each location where you participate.
Sincerely.
The LUGRo-Mesh Team.