OVI Panel Violating GPL License

[abhaysv]

Hi, today I was looking casually for reseller hosting panels. I found this site proving the OVI panel. On looking at the site it first seems free. Still, when you click download it provides a free one month trial, once it expires they ask you to buy their reseller hosting, so i went ahead and purchased it. Since it a modified version of sentora, I asked for the source code and they have denied proving the same,  which is a violation of the GPL license (this is what i understood reading it). Also with their distributed binaries, they haven't mentioned anything about GPL.

I have attached a link to their site: https://www.ovipanel.in/.

I just felt like making this thread since they r forcing people to buy stuff from them so that they can use the modified software. They pretend that it's their software, and will allow you to use if free if you buy servers form them.

[TGates]

Wow... We will look into it. Total rip off. And yes, they removed all footers and powered by from the panel and modules.
Me.B 5050
Thanks for posting this!

[5050]

Hi i did some little  investigation.
If you want to try any download, I registered an account and received these 2 emails. Let you use this account for tests :

Dear 5050 ,

Thank you for your purchase, Your free product has been processed and your account has been activated. With the login information (we have sent it a few seconds ago) you can login to our website and download the products you have ordered.

Order Information:

You have ordered the next items:

   [2125] [1900033546] Free Trial

Subscription Key: 38c74a4fab3ede2a79687c8d11a18973

Installation Steps:

Please follow the below easy steps to install ovipanel in your server.
1) Login into server as root
2) wget https://d.ovipanel.in/installV35.sh
3) sh installV35.sh
4) It will ask the subscription key, Please enter the subscription key which is mentioned above.
5) After that It will ask "Enter the client email address for WHM User :" Enter your email address and press enter.
    Note : This is the primary email address of your server. You will get all login credentials to this email address only.
6) When it asking "Enter the sub-domain you want to access OVIPanel panel:" Just press Enter
    Note : If you want to change the sub domain, you just modify it and press enter.
7) Then it will ask "The public IP of the server" Just press Enter.
    Note : Don't change this IP address at all.
8) When asking "Are you really sure that you want to setup OVIPanel with these parameters?" => Enter {y} and press enter.

Note: Once instllation is complete, Check /root/passwords.txt for MySQL, Control panel Admin, CSF and many other passwords.

If you need any help, Please raise ticket using https://ovipanel.in/support

We wish you lots of pleasure with our products.

With kind regards,

OVIPanel
https://ovipanel.in

Dear 5050 ,

We have created your user account a few seconds ago. With this username and password you will be able to login at our website https://www.ovipanel.in/

Username: 5050
Password: 4Bastards

With kind regards,

OVIPanel
https://ovipanel.in

I downloaded their installer, and found it downloads the real installer from

Code:

https://d.ovipanel.com/checksuphp34.php?key=38c74a4fab3ede2a79687c8d11a18973&ip=218.1.45.3

(key provided and random IP !)

I join here the 2 sh files grabbed from ovipanel.in website, renamed with .txt, and the whois file for their domain.



This file "InstallationScript.sh" that is a copy a very little bit modifyed of sentora installer, even containing my installer copyright  :

#  Author Pascal Peyremorte (ppeyremorte@sentora.org)
#    (main merge of all installers, modularization, reworks and comments)
#  With huge help and contributions from Mehdi Blagui, Kevin Andrews and
#  all those who participated to this and to previous installers.

and also

echo "Installer version $SENTORA_INSTALLER_VERSION"
echo "Sentora core version $SENTORA_CORE_VERSION"
echo "Sentora preconf version $SENTORA_PRECONF_VERSION"
echo ""
echo "Installing Sentora $SENTORA_CORE_VERSION at http://$PANEL_FQDN and ip $PUBLIC_IP"
echo "on server under: $OS  $VER  $ARCH"
uname -a

Thanks to the whois, we have everything to the domain owner : Dhanasekar Mani, full address, etc.


5050

[Me.B]

Total scam. Not even caring for GPL. They could even resell CPANEL that way .

[Akash N M]

Hello forum members,

Looks like this thread is about a month old and I have seen this today and I am replying. My name is Saravana and I work on this OviPanel. We have started the OviPanel development on Jun, 2016, the development started about 4 years ago. We have used SENTORA_CORE_VERSION="1.0.0" version as a base version to start our OviPanel development.

When you install OviPanel, you will have a complete access to all the source code. We have not removed any of the headers in the PHP source code such as
Example Filename: /etc/sentora/panel/modules/manage_clients/code/controller.ext.php
/**
* @copyright 2014-2015 Sentora Project (http://www.sentora.org/)
* Sentora is a GPL fork of the ZPanel Project whose original header follows:
*
* ZPanel - A Cross-Platform Open-Source Web Hosting Control panel.
*

All the copyright messages were kept in-tact. If any files are missing by chance, Kindly let us know.
We have extensively modified the sentora source code and also we have created around 65 modules newly.

It is FREELY available for download, We have not made it commercial so far. We plan to provide commercial support in future.
Rightnow, We are not providing any support.

If anyone wants more clarification, Please contact jegan and/or saravana at our domainname email ID.

[franmm25]

Yes i see this guy speak in many places about his control panel and when i look inside i see this control panel ut´s the old zpanel with modifications i believe it´s necessary legal actions about this situation

[wormsunited]

@Akash N M

How come you state you have not made it commercial so far when you are selling licences for something you took and modify to others? 

"It is FREELY available for download, We have not made it commercial so far"
Yes and no! Free to modify, download and use, not to distribute under those conditions, did you even know what GPL means? I dont think so.

On your website: "More than 2500+ Installations" (lies and more lies and if so, they were sold at 5$/month each. That is a scam, period. I personally checked your code, its a pure Sentora with your own branding, nothing else, what you did was to modify the source a bit with some cheap "tweaks" and thats about it.

Last but not least: "All the copyright messages were kept in-tact." False! Nothing there states or claims to be Sentora! Zero, Nada!

[Oliverames]

Hi, today I was looking casually for reseller hosting panels. I found this site proving the OVI panel. On looking at the site it first seems free. Still, when you click download it provides a free one month trial, once it expires they ask you to buy their reseller hosting, so i went ahead and purchased it. Since it a modified version of sentora, I asked for the source code and they have denied proving the same,  which is a violation of the GPL license (this is what i understood reading it). Also with their distributed binaries, they haven't mentioned anything about GPL.
I have attached a link to their site: https://www.ovipanel.in/ snow road
I just felt like making this thread since they r forcing people to buy stuff from them so that they can use the modified software. They pretend that it's their software, and will allow you to use if free if you buy servers form them.

Have you considered reaching out to the Free Software Foundation or a legal expert to report this potential violation of the GPL license, and what steps do you think could be taken to raise awareness about this issue within the community?

[Me.B]

Who have time and means to fight?

We struggle to maintain but that's how some do...

[shoeam67]

Hi, today I was looking casually for reseller hosting panels. I found this site proving the OVI panel. On looking at the site it first seems free. Still, when you click download it provides a free one month trial, once it expires they ask you to buy their reseller hosting, so i went ahead and purchased it. Since it a modified version of sentora, I asked for the source code and they have denied proving the same,  which is a violation of the GPL license (this is what i understood reading it). Also with their distributed binaries, they haven't mentioned anything about GPL.

I have attached a link to their site: https://www.ovipanel.in/.

I just felt like making this thread since they r forcing people to buy stuff from them so that they can use the modified software. They pretend that it's their software, and will allow you to use if free if you buy servers form them.

It's concerning to see companies misrepresenting GPL-licensed software and forcing users to purchase services to access modified versions, undermining the principles of open-source transparency and accessibility.

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