The free community version of Rustdesk Server (a competitor to the Teamviewer remote access software) is AGPL licensed.
https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk-server
The paid, proprietary Pro version builds on top of the community edition by adding extra features such as user authentication and a web backend for administration.
There exists a repo for the pro server: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk-server-pro
But it only contains install scripts and no actual source code of the application.
The github releases page of this repo however, contains the compiled code of the proprietary pro version and is available for anyone to download for free.
Analyzing the disassembly of the pro and open source binaries shows that the pro version is definitely based on the open source version.
The company previously associated with Rustdesk, Purslane Limited of the UK, is no longer in operation since 2023.
The project has no CLA and so the dozens of previous contributors still hold the copyright to their code and have not given permission for it to be used in a proprietary version.
There have been multiple requests for the source code of this pro version, but either there was no response or the issue was closed without comment.
EDIT: The repo owner has completely deleted the issue, here is a screenshot: https://0x0.st/KaqD.png
To me this just proves they know what they’re doing is wrong.
Are there other discussions about this on the net? I glanced at r/rust and HN and didn’t see anything. For such a blatant violation, I’d expect to see lots of drama and shaming going on.
That’s the most cut and dry example of copy-left license violation imaginable. This would even be a violation of a GPLv2 license. It’s like they had zero idea what that license meant.
Isn’t the dev behind rustdesk (at least the original) anonymous? I remember that standing out as a red flag for me when I was evaluating options, and ended up going with Mesh Central instead (which works much better imo)
That sucks, because they’re one of the only ones supporting Wayland, and I don’t like using software from shady companies…
Rustdesk has always been kinda shady
The copyright holder doesn’t legally have to follow the terms of their own license. It sucks that it’s not FOSS, but this isn’t a violation unless there are contributers who didn’t consent to a proprietary distribution.
this isn’t a violation unless there are contributers who didn’t consent to a proprietary distribution.
Analyzing the disassembly of the pro and open source binaries shows that the pro version is definitely based on the open source version.
That would include changes made later on in the OSS version, that were backported to Pro without permission from the original authors.
Did they accept PRs from people? If so, then yeah, that’s illegal.
I wanted to add this discussion post to the mix because I saw this when reading about the related article
it seems that Rustdesk server pro is a parent of the non-pro edition of it, so its not that it uses code from the opensourced project, but that the open sourced project uses the code from the closed source project. Meaning that the licensing restriction of doesn’t apply to that project as it’s actually the original source, and that they made the open sourced project based off that closed source.
If they import contributions to the community edition into the pro edition without license assignment then it’s still a GPL violation
the issue’s gone now
