New Guy in town!
-
Hello everyone. I'm new to the forums, however, I've been hanging around reading and trouble shooting for a while. I've used pfSense for over a year now, and really, the only problems I've had have been "self-inflicted" lol.
Great job on the forums guys, you have helped me through all of my blunders!
But I was wondering, I have seen some pfSense boxes for sale on the internet, and was curious about the legality of that. Does one need a license to sell a box with the pfsense software built in? (other than a regular business license?) From what I had understood, freebsd was free. Is there a copywrite license that has to be purchased from either the freebsd team or pfsense? ???
-
pfSense is BSD licensed as well. That means you're free to do pretty much whatever you want with the sourcecode or binaries provided you retain the BSD license text somewhere in your distribution (if you distribute your changes). The BSD license is one of the most permissive of all free software licenses - you're free to use the code for any commercial purpose as long as you retain the copyright notice. You'd do well to read the license.
Note that distribution for commercial purposes is allowed under all true free software licenses (such as the GPL used for many other free software projects) as well, though they may impose other requirements for distribution and modification that the BSD license does not.
-
It's legal to sell devices with pfSense installed, but you must be careful to not infringe on pfSense's trademark.
So for starters, no pfSense logo on the outside of your box (unless you have received permission), and you must be careful in your use of the pfSense name as well.
There is some more info on the pfSense site
They also have a "Reseller Subscription" which grants additional rights.
-
Thanks guys. Turns out I have some reading to do lol.
-
I customize the pfSense sources and rename the "pfSense" to "MyFirewall" and sold it as a commercial product, I have to open my sources code or not ?
-
I customize the pfSense sources and rename the "pfSense" to "MyFirewall" and sold it as a commercial product, I have to open my sources code or not ?
The full details are on the license page, but since the code is BSD licensed, that means you do not have to disclose the source code. You only need to keep all of the copyright notices and license disclaimers in place.
If you really want to know 100% for sure, you will need to consult with a lawyer. Which if you are seeking a commercial business, you may already have one handy.
