Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

Mullvad highlighting the fact that Malwareware bytes is using their network:

https://mullvad.net/en/help/partnerships-and-resellers/

The essence of the article:

Except that Malwarebytes Privacy is just some paint on top of Mullvad and various open-source tools, which would be a parasitic albeit fine behaviour if this was clearly disclosed (as Mullvad is (amusingly) doing on its website), but there is no mention of this whatsoever on Malwarebytes' one. Worse, they're using a possessive voice when talking about the servers (that are Mullvad's) and the code (mostly Wintun and wireguard-windows amongst other, to which they didn't contribute back a single line of code.

Speaking of code, it's shipping

7z.dll from 2018, licensed under LGPL, and some parts under BSD, violating this license. wintun.dll, from the Wintun project, without mentioning it, thus violating its license. Most of the embedded dependencies are from 2018, and subject to documented vulnerabilities:

OpenSSL 1.1.0h pcre2 7z, as mentioned above Poco 1.9.0

It has always amused me that despite how liberal BSD licenses are, there are always those guys that manage to violate even them.

> wintun.dll, from the Wintun project, without mentioning it, thus violating its license.

I am curious and want to understand, not arguing, but this is a serious allegation. Can someone point out exactly where the Wintun violation is?

I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read the license [1] carefully, and I don’t see an obvious violation for failure to mention Wintun. Section 3 “RESTRICTIONS” does say no removing of proprietary notices, labels or copyrights - is that the problem? It says no redistributing the “rights of the Software” which is different than using the Software directly. And maybe(?) most relevant it says you cannot use the name Wintun to promote your own software, which seems potentially almost opposite of this claim of violation. The license does not seem to mention any requirement to post the name of the project, did I miss something subtle?

[1] https://git.zx2c4.com/wintun/tree/prebuilt-binaries-license....

Needs to be analysed one-by-one.

> Section 3 “RESTRICTIONS” does say no removing of proprietary notices, labels or copyrights - is that the problem?

The license in itself doesn't say that, but the header to link to the DLL is dual-licensed under GPL and 3-BSD (note that the rest of WinTun is solely GPL), and all BSD variants requires notices (even if it is in an About section).

> It says no redistributing the “rights of the Software” which is different than using the Software directly.

So no sub-licensing, for example. They can distribute the software as-is (if using this license), but they cannot adjust the restrictions to a more permissive software (say, BSD or MIT license). This is to enforce GPL2 in other scenarios. This is equivalent in proprietary licenses, where it says that the software is licensed to you but its IP is not transferred.

> And maybe(?) most relevant it says you cannot use the name Wintun to promote your own software, which seems potentially almost opposite of this claim of violation.

"Promotion" here has a specific meaning, at least in the US. Mentioning that your software uses WinTun for legal compliance is not promotion. Mentioning WinTun in your advertisement for the software (unless to mention that it uses WinTun for its VPN), and especially mentioning that WinTun reccomends your software is banned. This might be very obvious, but even 3-BSD (example follows) has maintained this language because trademark laws are weird.

Extract of 3-BSD:

  3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

>but this is a serious allegation

Haha, no. Even if entirely true, it's really not a serious allegation.

Why 7z and not the fully public-source version 7za? I'm really confused here, there's a way to avoid this problem, and Malwarebytes just failed it. I don't think that they need to use other decompression methods.

Why is bundling a (L)GPL .dll considered a violation?

They have to provide the source code for those DLLs, which they aren't doing.

Actually I wanted to know, which clause says that. Is it Section 4d0?

No they don't, if I am correct all they need to do is allow you to swap out the dll for your own and put a license.txt or what not with the license. As long as the DLL is setup as a shared library (which it is) it is fine.

The source code is necessary to create "your own".

Not always, but, practically.

Because you have to make the source code available to people who receive your distribution of the library.

So? Maybe malwarebytes are doing that?

Are they? I got the sense that this is the issue.

I'll have to brush up on this, GPL that's not seen by people say it does something in messaging or part of DNS or something, it would still have to be public? Use case is part of some web-app that isn't installed.

If its running on your server, then you aren't distributing it. There are licenses like AGPL that do try to limit that usage but GPL does not. Now if it is a web app that has client code that gets executed in the browser, that is distributed to the end user and GPL would apply, so you would need to include license notifications for that within your app or as part of the source code distributed. In that case you are already distributing source but you may need to make an unobfuscated source available if your distribution is minified/uglified.

YANAL ha, but I was curious even if we did have to disclose the specific GPL piece of software, do we only have to release that part? Not the entire app.

> web app that has client code that gets executed in the browser,

That's the technicality stuff, the client triggers an event, that then uses this GPL piece of code that is on the server. I went through our stuff (mostly NPM) and they all are either Apache/MIT but there was one piece like ahh... Anyway not making money yet but will bring this up for review with legal.

Thanks

Did you ask?

You shouldn’t have to ask. The GPL requires that the distributor either sends the source code alongside the binaries, or that the distributor sends along an explicit written offer to send the source code. If you, as a recipient of binaries, did not get such an offer, and no source code was sent along the binaries either, the GPL was violated. There is no recovery from this, even if the distributor sends the source code on request.

Can you point to where in the GPL it says that it must be explicitly offered? I don't remember ever reading anything that gave me that impression, or anyone even informally mentioning that was the case.

I ask because I'd be in violation. I've attached the GPL to a bunch of dinky little projects I haven't bother hosting a public repository for because I don't think anyone else in the 'verse really cares. In most cases I know I'm the only user, but there are a few that some other people have at least downloaded (probably bots or mistakes, but downloaded nonetheless).

Section 6 pretty much lets you choose between:

- Bundling the source with the program (a)

- Letting people download the source from the same place as they can download the program (d)

- A written offer to hand over the source on request (b, c, e)

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

You’re not in violation. If people download the binaries, and you offer the source code at the same download site, and they choose not to download the source code, that’s on them; you are off the hook.

I also did not mention (because it was not relevant to the parties being discussed) one other option: If you received the binaries from someone else, with a written offer for source code, and you are distributing the binaries non-commercially, you can simply forward a copy of the written offer of source code you received.

The section of the GPL 2 you want is section 3, and in GPL 3 it’s section 6.

This is covered in section 6 of the GPL(v3). See the text here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

Note that there are some changes here compared to v2 of the GPL.

IANAL but my understanding/interpretation (simplified) is you have to either:

6a) Ship the binaries in a physical product with a copy of the source code accompanying

6b) Ship the binaries in a physical product along with an offer to provide the source code on request

6c) "occasionally and noncommercially" ship the binaries (not necessarily in a physical product) along with an offer to provide the source code on request

6d) Make the binaries available from somewhere (e.g. a website) which also offers the source code (e.g. GitHub would count)

6e) Ship the binaries via a P2P mechanism if you include a link to where you host the source code

Again, IANAL but if you hosted a GPLv3 binary somewhere without source code, it would technically be a violation of the GPL.

However, since you are the copyright holder in this case, you can ship it however you want - it would just prevent anyone else from then distributing it under the GPL since they wouldn't be able to comply with section 6, since they don't have the source code.

But this is not about distributing GPL code in a custom binary. Rather, a GPL binary library was linked against by a custom binary, and that GPL binary was distributed alongside the ”custom” binary. Do those license terms apply here?

Yes, linking to a GPL library means you need to follow the terms of the GPL.

Pardon the confusion, this was about LGPL, not GPL—and the former does allow linking.

There are terms you need to follow when you link to LGPL libraries, as well. You need to provide your compiled program in an object format such that users can link it against their own versions of the LGPL library you originally linked it against. The LGPLv3 also adds some anti-Tivoization clauses, too, that make those rights explicit.

If my dubious understanding of the GPL is correct, you can link to an LGPL DLL without assuming the LGPL. Distributing that DLL modified/unmodified would require also distributing the corresponding modified/unmodified source code. I don't think that in this case we have a violation (for the LGPL code) since it's unlikely that they modified the source code for the named libraries (and would provide links to the unmodified source code after application of legal pressure). I also would assume that the copyright notices required to be displayed are all listed somewhere buried in the about dialog of the running software.

[append]

> wintun.dll, from the Wintun project, without mentioning it, thus violating its license.

Also, after reading the license, I don't see this particular clause at all.

From what I remember someone should basically be free to modify the DLL distributed under the LGPL license, so they need to be able to access the corresponding source-code and whatever logic is necessary to link a new DLL to the application (if required).

According to clause 4, you either provide enough source to compile and load a modified lib, or you use a dynamically linked lib. If you go the dynamic linking route no source distribution is required. I guess they figure the end user can get source from the library project themselves.

> If you go the dynamic linking route no source distribution is required.

For your code. The LGPL code still requires source distribution. (Plus, the BSD clause requires attribution.)

Certainly the authors of said LGPL code are distributing that source. Would it make sense to distribute the source of every .dll included in a project?

… Yes. That's your obligation under the LGPL. Pretty much your only obligation, actually – other than including the “this is this, by these people, licensed this way” boilerplate text.

Alternatively you could include the offer to distribute

Only with (L)GPLv2, I believe.

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