With open source, we mean that the source code, which constitutes our products, is made available to our customers, who can utilize, read and modify the code. This assures the user that the program is doing what it should and is adjustable to fit the customers needs. Such modifications are commonly made by the original author, who may choose to make those adjustments a part of the official version. Find more information about the projects we build our products on.
GPL (copyright)
In GNU General Public License 2.0, it says (translated freely) that it is prohibited to withhold source codes from the user, if the source code is a development of the source code protected by GPL. One is not allowed to further spread the developed software or the original. However, there is nothing that states that one has to make one’s seperated and stand alone add ons available to the general public. (Read more about GPL>>)
op5's products are based on a number of different GPL licenced softwares. We develop functionality, which is normally added to one or more open source code programs. The code usually involves integrated functions, between several independent programs, in order to obtain added functionality and/or user-friendliness. Our source code is always available to our customers.
op5's programmers are active members of several open source communities, and a lot of the work being done is submitted back to the communities.
What Open Source does op5 utilize?
We utilize open source code projects, in our systems, from a wide variety of tested products with a proven good track record, to alpha releases of softwares which we review ourselves, in order to verify that the code is secure and stable.
As a basis for our appliance, we utilize CentOS (www.centos.org). CentOS can be viewed as RedHat Enterprise Linux, except that it is for free, or, as CentOS say it themselves. “CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor".
List of Open Source Projects Utilized
Nagios, http://www.nagios.org/
NSClient++, http://trac.nakednuns.org/nscp/
The Ninja Project, http://www.op5.org/community/projects/ninja
Please contact us if you want more information on these projects and how they are used, info @op5.com
What Open Source Licenses can be found in op5 softwares?
Please refere to our licences page for more information.
Does op5 support the projects used?
There are several different ways of supporting the Open Source community and the different project. op5 support many of the projects used in varius ways. op5 is an active contributor of bugg fixes and patches to Nagios, employees actively work on several open source projects and some projects are sponsored by op5. We also develop several open source projects of our own, they are all available at www.op5.org and well known open source directories.
