VICIDIAL Licensing and sales: What is OK and what is not

[mflorell]

After several incidents over the last month I feel that I need to clarify what is OK and what is not when you sell service for VICIDIAL.

First of all, if you change the name and/or modify the code in ANY way(that includes just changing the name on the scripts) you have to release the full source code base as GPL publicly as well as point your customers to the source code as well as the GPL LICENSE file that must accompany the code in all releases.

Secondly, your customers need to understand that they are only buying a service not a product and that the dialer is Open Source and GPL licensed. They need to understand this, not just see it mentioned once in a contract.

Third, stating that the software was wholly or primarily developed by your company is dishonest (unless you are eflo.net) and while not illegal it is extemely misleading and a bad business practice.

Lastly, the VICIDIAL manuals offered for download and sale at eflo.net are NOT GPL and are protected by copyright. You cannot copy text or images from them and distribute it to your clients without paying redistribution fees. If you are doing this please contact eflo.net to learn how you can come into compliance.

There are several other issues associated with this topic but these are the main points that some companies have had issues with.


There was also more on this subject in this thread:
http://www.eflo.net/VICIDIALforum/viewtopic.php?t=1029


UPDATE-----------------

Link to the official VICIDIAL Trademark use policy:
http://vicidialva.com/index.php?page=Le ... =Trademark

[Op3r]

Made this as an announcement.

Matt,

would like to ask if restricting the clients and charging them additional fees for the seats is in violation of the license?

to others

Please donate to the VICIDIAL project. just for 5% of the profit after expenses is good enough to help continue the VICIDIAL project. (I will start donating when I get a new client)

[mflorell]

I don't even know how you would go about restricting the number of seats in VICIDIAL since there is no mechanism to do this.

Restricting the number of seats and specifically changing for new seats to be added would be a violation of the GPL because that would be a software restriction. Don't do it.

[Op3r]

exactly what I need to read.

you can just refuse to give them the root password. but you can give them the admin access to the web interface. they can make all the mods they want but they cant really add extensions.

anyway, lets hope this clarifies things.

[vctor]

Very well said Matt! Hope that other people here would abide in this.

[enjay]

I will definately donate to the cause as well.

-Art

[skiv]

Hi Matt, I'm making some customisationsright now, what should do to make this code licensed under GPL? I will update the header with the GPL notice, what else should ne done?
Thanks in advance!

[mflorell]

If the code changes are only for you or your company then you do not have to release it, but if you do want to release it or it is to be distributed to other users then you will need to add the disclaimer to the file at the top and it will be GPL, easy as that.

For more information on the GPL license, look here:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

[Tetram]

On that specific subject, as I was searching on French translation (nearly finished / tested now...) I just found that : http://www.worldbizconsultant.com/introduction.php

which seems very far from GPL spirit .....

[mflorell]

Thank you very much for the notice. I have emailed the people at worldbizconsultant.com about their GPL and copyright violations. I will post here when I get a response.

As for a French translation of VICIDIAL, we have a basic translation of the agent clients with no translated buttons, if you would be willing to help with the translations I would very much appreciate it.

[Tetram]

I just finished a first draft of the french translation for user side and I work now on the admin. I send the result now on vicidial@gmail.com

I made several tests building the pages with the build-translation script and it should be ok for a first 'readable' version (most strings included in the initial automatic translation doesn't mean anything in French....)

by the way, I turned into a real nighmare as some strings crashed the GUI after translation. after searching for long.... I found that it was caused by a translated string containing a ' and used as parameterof "alert" function call...( alert('STRING D'UNE STRING') is not working properly and \' can't be used in HTML strings ...)

I had to do with it, but as it's not possible to distinguish strings used in HTML from strings used as function call args... it may happen again and not only in French

[chaos43]

i was never told i was purchasing opensource software untill after i signed my contract but i like the software just wish i wouldnt have purchased my system from an idiot

[Op3r]

where did you purchase it? who sold it to you?

[ramindia]

Hi chaos43

Kinldy mention the name of the consultant
so people are aware that whome your are buying
and their credentials.

ram

[chaos43]

MD Technologies
www.telemarketingdialer.com
used to be
www.pbxunlimited.com

I have had nothing but problems from the start

[nobesnickr]

Matt (and to all those concerned)

I am a part-time IT guy for a company who was wanting to start telemarketing. Before I started working there they paid some guy name Albert who "works" (he is the only person who works there as far as i can tell) who was selling Vicidial (he did list the software as Vicidial) and made NO mention of the fact it was GPL or free software and he was only charging for the install. My company paid him over 16k for the entire setup and basically stole their money. Never showed up with anything at all.

Needless to say, we are taking legal action (already cancelled our credit card and are working with local police here as well as in Ponoma,California where he lives).

I was asked to try and build a dialer for them (not knowing much at all about any of this) and luckily he did list Vicidial on his website as what he uses as his system so I found out about this project this way.

After a week of hell and learning Linux, Asterisk coding, and Vicidial I finally got this thing working and working great.

It truly is an amazing system and my thanks (and on Monday, my donation) go out to everyone who has made this happen.

Anyways, this rant was not for nothing. It seems other people have had nightmare with this person and after reading the topic of this post I would like to point this out to all of you who have put so much hard work into making this amazing tool free.

If Matt and whoever else is wanting to pursue action against him as well for violating the GPL I have all of his information and would be MORE than happy to supply it as well as anything else you might need just email/PM me

Thanks again for everything!

[mflorell]

I am sorry that you had a bad initial experience with VICIDIAL, but I'm very glad you found this site and are making progress on your own. Something that we are going to do next year is start a certification process for VICIDIAL consultants that will help to sort out the good from the bad.

As for suing for GPL violation, I'm not sure we could do that since he did not deliver anything to you, so there really isn't much we can do on that front. I think you would have a lot more luck going after him criminally or civilly. Good luck on that front and keep us updated.

[amitshur]

I AM SHOCKED! NO WORDS TO SAY AT ALL, ITS TIME TO ACT NOW AFTER READING ALL THIS. BUT GUYS I WILL SHARE MY HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE WITH YOU SOMETIME LATER, RIGHT NOW IN A HURRY.

[nobesnickr]

This is for anyone having problems with Albert or anyone else having been scammed by a Vicidial reseller.

My company has been working on this system for over a year and a half now. I started on Vicidial pretty new and through the help of Matt and the community I have become very proficient with the system.

If you have had any issues being scammed I will do my best to help offer advice and my expertise to you or your IT staff on what to do to get the system working. If you require more hands on help, myself, and a few others here (as well as Matt I believe) offer consultation and configuration assistance for a fee.

Please contact me if you need anything.

Thanks,
Phil McCaffrey
EBON Communications

[vasix]

Hi Matt

If you didn't know, the guys from Inovo Romania (centraleip . ro) are the creators of Vicidial, not you.
They sell your software in Romania under their logo. You can check on their web page to see your reports "powered by inovo click2call"

To see a sample go to call-center tab on their website and check the links under predictive dialing.

Best regards and thanks,

[mflorell]

Here's a link:
http://www.centraleip.ro/call-center/

It's all of the PDF links on the right side.

Call Center Inovo - Centrale IP

Yep, looks like another entry to add to the ViciDial knockoff list of companies that claim ViciDial as their own. I will try to contact them with a cease and desist letter later this week.

Thanks for the note!

[vasix]

you can notify their customers, they have some big ones on their testimonial page

go to "CLIENTI" tab, you'll see Datek Telecom and several others there, well known companies in Romania

[mflorell]

Unfortunately we don't speak Romanian, so we may have some difficulty in interacting with them at a level that we can understand each other. Also, I am not aware at what level IP cases are handled in Romania. If it is anything like India we have no hope of enforcing our copyright.

[vasix]

Romania is somehow "higher" than India at this level. We have gov agencies handling the copyright issues, however do not put your trust to much.
Don't worry about speaking romanian, they speak english for sure (enough to read your manual ).
The best you can do is to notify their customers as well (especially Datek Telecom, which is an ISP dealing with banks and other institutions). It will not be good for their records to use stolen software, even from open source.

And don't be shy, list them on your Hall of Shame, so every user of Vicidial will know they are thieves. In Romania more and more call centers use your software (hopefully in legal way, like myself ), so bad publicity for thieves will be the first step.

Best regards,
Vasix

[whispercomm]

Matt,

one big difference between Romania and India is that Romania is now within the EU, so they are bound by EU rules and regulations (for the most part).

Not that it make it much easier to get someone to stop using the code improperly however. But you might have some additional channels to go through should you wish to pursue it.

[gardo]

I think we should have a hall of shame page. That way users have a way of knowing which companies are knock offs and which are not.

[mflorell]

We used to have one on our site, but it was lost in a re-branding a while ago. I believe I still have the content somewhere, just need the time to put it together.

[Crimson Jack]

You'd think with all the hard work that must've gone into the programming of VICI and the fact that its free... You'd think people would at least give you the proper credit.

[perci100]

http://www.wepowersales.com is also reselling your dialer. They have created a bunch of features that were never released under GPL. Located in brooklyn. Though a web search will show otherwise.

we used them for a while and that is when I discovered (by doing my own research) that this dialer was in fact open source. I learned it , implemented it and now we are running a cluster in house.

I dont see any mention on the site of it being free or open source.

Horrible people to work with btw. They are even outsourcing some of their services to Afghanistan which is awesome.

[Mudd]

How do you feel about companies that create modifications then when former employees use same or similar modifications and open their own call center. That same company files false police reports for theft and tries shut down for COPYWRITE vioations?

Avatar has Modified your software. Live Agents Listen and then push to play a audio files in response to Client questions. Does Avatar now own that VERSION of your software or do you still own and is the software still OPENSOURCE or can they NOW CLAIM OWNERSHIP as they are doing?

There is an article: Avatar Technologies Inc., a BPO company which maintains offices in Iloilo City, accused Comtech of the unauthorized use of the Avatar’s operations software.
Oscar Razzok, Avatar-Iloilo chief executive officer, acted as witness against Comtech.
The NBI took into custody 32 employees who were allegedly caught doing online works.
A total of 30 computer sets were also seized during the raid.
The Daily Guardian learned that one of the Comtech officers used to work for Avatar.
Under copyright laws, a BPO firm should own and use original computer software. If it will use a software owned by another company, it must secure the expressed permission of the original owner.

[mflorell]

If it is a dirivative work of Vicidial(meaning they used portions of the Vicidial code in their scripts), then their code is also under the AGPLv2 license and is free to distribute by the users of the system. Of course you would need to prove that this happened by looking at the source code.

[Acidshock]

Matt,

I am privately messaging you some proof.

[Acidshock]

Just curious, for giggles... if I requested Convoso's code would they have to comply by the license?

[carpenox]

heh good question ive asked myself the same question about quite a few platforms

[mflorell]

Yes, if they are using VICIdial code anywhere in their web screens, you can request their code. Legally, they have to comply, if not, you have to sue them to get them to comply. We have sued a company before for this and won.

[Acidshock]

Do you have a template letter to request the code? I want to request it from Convoso... Sort of stirring the pot a bit on it but they are definitely using VICIDIAL. Pretty sure they are going to tell me to go F myself but its worth a try. Maybe we can get enough people to chip in if they do lol.

Looking at their code:

Code: Select all

         <div class="row form-group" ng-show="data.CurrentDialSettingOptions.dial_method == 'ADAPT_AVERAGE' || data.CurrentDialSettingOptions.dial_method == 'ADAPT_HARD_LIMIT' || data.CurrentDialSettingOptions.dial_method == 'ADAPT_TAPERED'">
               <label class="col-sm-3 control-label">Ramp up Intensity %:</label>
               <div class="col-sm-3">
                  <select name="form['adaptive_drop_percentage']" class="form-control" ng-model="data.CurrentDialSettingOptions.adaptive_intensity" ng-options="obj.value as obj.name for obj in data.DialSettingOptions.adaptive_intensity" >
                  </select>
               </div>
               <div class="col-sm-3">This defined the Predictive Intensity in which the dialer ramps up to the Maximum dial level set. </div>                                 
            </div>

            <div class="row form-group" ng-show="data.CurrentDialSettingOptions.dial_method == 'ADAPT_AVERAGE' || data.CurrentDialSettingOptions.dial_method == 'ADAPT_HARD_LIMIT' || data.CurrentDialSettingOptions.dial_method == 'ADAPT_TAPERED'">
               <label class="col-sm-3 control-label">Average Agent Wait Time:</label>
               <div class="col-sm-3">

[mflorell]

Each request is different, but the most relevant part is always something like this:

"Under the terms of the AGPLv2 license, as a web user of this software on your system, I request the full source code that you used segments of the Open-Source VICIdial code within. That includes the full agent interface and several administrative PHP scripts."

[carpenox]

heh ijust said that to kingasterisk who replied with ok illsend it to vicidial....i would be willing to bet he does not, but let me know if you can Matt

[Acidshock]

Well sent off to Convoso last week. No response so far. They are just ignoring me on it.

[Acidshock]

Lol Still nothing...