# banned from pfsense



## gugabsd (Jul 21, 2016)

Hello list,

This is well off-topic, but required for this somehow, many people know my work and I both did and do for Linux/BSD and related

Out of nowhere, I was banned from all that is pfSense channel, facebook groups, mailing list and forum. I believe that because of a posting I made [1] thanking an email I received in [2] list, amazingly! I was banned.

[1] https://twitter.com/guga.../status/755787682438152196/photo/1...
[2] http://lists.pfsense.org/p.../pfsense-pt/2016-July/004550.html

And I'm still getting over and messages on twitter troll (who coincidentally sends messages just before and after a pfSense's staff person).

It is sad that, I work with pfSense from the first fork's his beta from m0n0wall, when the PF was still a patch in the 5.x versions of FreeBSD, has even worked with the staff with a BSD Perimeter and today the thing be the way it is!

Asked by a pfsense group of user because of that, since we are dealing with a project "open source", they claim that I vilify and i spread contradictions about the project, and amazingly, I am accused of trying to hijack the group "pfSense Brazil " to which I created around 2012.

Anyway. Today I am unable even to post help in official channels!

here is my indignation.

Hugs to all!


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## coolhandluke (Jul 21, 2016)

What is the point of your post?  What is your goal by posting this here?  What are you trying to accomplish here?

I fail to see what this has to do with The FreeBSD Project, how it affects any of us here, or why we should care, to be quite honest.  My first impression is that you're simply trying to keep this issue alive, garner support for yourself and/or against pfSense, and/or trolling.  In my opinion, it's probably best to simply lock / kill this thread and move on.

On a side note, your second links returns a 404.  Either the URL is wrong or they've deleted the thread you're referencing.


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## gugabsd (Jul 21, 2016)

Yep.... I went to review here if I really had posted in the right place, and it is rather "Off-Topic"

Is true, i could really forget about it and move on, even after serving so long with the project. however, I can not afford to omit the charges that are on my person.

"your second links returns a 404" (correct: http://lists.pfsense.org/pipermail/pfsense-pt/2016-July/004550.html)

And thank you for your attention and advice!


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## Murph (Jul 21, 2016)

FreeBSD people and the FreeBSD Foundation have no real control or influence over what happens with FreeBSD derivatives; beyond controlling the various FreeBSD trademarks (Beastie and derivatives (such as the project logo), the name itself, and not much else).

I offer no opinion as to who was more right or wrong than anyone else in this matter; honestly I don't have any interest in disagreements on pfSense forums/lists.  I will offer the opinion that dragging the matter onto other *BSD places is quite unlikely to achieve anything good or useful; it is quite likely to convince people that the ban was needed and should be permanent (i.e. the powers that be at pfSense are likely to view things such as this thread quite negatively).  If you are an innocent victim (and I'm not saying that you are, only allowing for that possibility), it sucks, but you are not doing yourself any favours by shopping the issue around unrelated forums.


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## Phishfry (Jul 21, 2016)

Maybe you should turn your attention to FreeBSD. We really need any programming help around here. Let bygones be bygones. If your really pissed you could swap to OPNsense. Life is too short to take it personal.

I think you used the copyrighted logo for your twitter from what I gather. You got to understand they are under attack from people who sell pfSense(r) things on ebay(r) and people are always trying to blatantly rip off the project. They must defend their trademarks and copyrights vigorously.

That is my 2 cents from an outsider. A language barrier sure did not help.


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## kpa (Jul 21, 2016)

PfSense is a federally registered trademark of Electric Sheep Fencing LLC *), you will face action, possibly legal, if you try to use their trademark no matter what your intent is or how innocent it is. The move to trademarking pfSense was driven by counterfeit clones of pfSense that were built from pfSense sources and used the name pfSense but weren't blessed by the project itself. Many of these clones were distributed in portuguese speaking parts of south america such as Brazil. What really irritated the pfSense devs was that the clones directed the users of these clones to the pfSense support channels for support.

*) https://www.pfsense.org/about-pfsense/


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## Murph (Jul 21, 2016)

It is worth noting that in most countries, intellectual property laws actually require that trademark owners defend them.  I.e. the law forces them to be aggressive about unauthorised use of trademarks; otherwise they lose some or all of their rights to the mark(s).  Of course, in the case of benign infringement, the owners do have the choice to settle the matter amicably and include licensed use in the settlement (but they are under no obligation to do so).

Historically, Beastie almost was almost kidnapped by commercial interests due to this type of thing (defend it or lose it), so Kirk now has stricter requirements over the use and is more protective of unlicensed use.


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## Oko (Jul 21, 2016)

kpa said:


> PfSense is a federally registered trademark of Electric Sheep Fencing LLC *), you will face action, possibly legal,


+1

It  is worth nothing that pfSense is proprietary product which uses Apache 2 license. Anybody interesting in the free and open source(BSD or ISC licenses) firewall solution should be looking somewhere else. It is also a big red flag that Apache 2 license is misrepresented on pfSense website as a close cousin of MIT license. Nothing could be further from the truth as MIT is indeed free and open source license unlike proprietary Apache 2 license.


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## gonzopancho (Jul 21, 2016)

Murph said:


> Historically, Beastie almost was almost kidnapped by commercial interests due to this type of thing (defend it or lose it), so Kirk now has stricter requirements over the use and is more protective of unlicensed use.



True, but Kirk defends Beastie via copyright, not trademark.

Interestingly, Luiz has a project "freepf", a fork of pfSense (which is fine).  The "freepf.org" website uses a modified version of the FreeBSD "beach ball" logo, which is a registered mark of the FreeBSD Foundation.   This is for the Foundation to defend, or choose not to defend, but as Murph points out, in most geographies, there is a duty to defend trademarks. 

It's true that Luiz was briefly employed by BSD Perimeter to work on pfSense, but that relationship was terminated after 3 months.

Luiz Gustavo tried to take over this pfSense BR group ownership, banned everyone at ESF/Netgate and started to spread misinformation about pfSense project. I had Facebook restore the group to ESF/Netgate, and we will continue to operate it. Subsequent to our being restored as admins of the pfSense BR group, Luiz Gustavo has continued his pattern of spreading misinformation about the pfSense project.

Luiz Gustavo has benefited immensely from our work. We did not expect that he would behave as he has. Because of his abusive behavior, we have decided to disassociate him from the project.

Jim


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## cmb (Jul 22, 2016)

coolhandluke said:


> What is the point of your post? What is your goal by posting this here?



He's spewing garbage trying to denigrate pfSense all over the place, in the interest of promoting his fork. Doing so on our sites is why he got banned.



gugabsd said:


> amazingly, I am accused of trying to hijack the group "pfSense Brazil "



Somehow I'm not surprised you find it "amazing" people are telling the absolute truth and reality of what happened. There is nothing accusatory about it, it's what happened. Jim filled in the details for everyone else with the misfortune of encountering this drama.

As for the claim that he was some significant contributor, you can look at the public github repos to see how true that is. 6 commits all time out of into tens of thousands total. 



Oko said:


> It is worth nothing that pfSense is proprietary product which uses Apache 2 license



That's absolutely not true in the least. The Apache 2 license is an OSI-approved open source license. Nothing proprietary about it.


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## wblock@ (Jul 22, 2016)

And that seems like a good place to end this thread.  Thanks, all.


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