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GPL violation in Netopsystems FEAD Optimizer/Recomposer used by Adobe Reade: msg#00015law.gpl.violations.technical
A while ago I discovered a GPL violation in the installation package of the Adobe Reader 6 and 7. The installation package uses a high compression technology (FEAD) sold by the Netopsystems AG (www.netopsystems.com). The package consists of an SFX header which extracts the rest of the install file to a folder, which then contains the "original" Adobe Reader install shield package. I was wondering how they do such great compression (since the Adobe Installshield package is already compressed, they still compress it much more). So I was playing around with the SFX and found out that they use some kind of executable compression or encryption technology. The only good exe-compression utility I know of is UPX written by Markus Oberhumer (www.oberhumer.com). So I downloaded the UPX source code and after playing around a little I finally made it to successfully decompress the SFX header. So this is proof of concept that they use UPX, which is copyrighted by the GPL. Markus Oberhumer has stated that UPX might be used by anyone for any file or program. The program being compressed does not need to be published under the terms of the GPL, but only, if UPX has not been modified! Since Netopsystems modified UPX so noone is able to decompress their SFX with standard UPX they actually MUST publish their FEAD optimizer under the terms of the GPL, as this is stated in Markus Oberhumers license agreement. They definitely violate that rule, and I bet they do it by knowing about their violation, since they changed UPX in a way which makes it unrecognizable for the people. They changed all occurences of the UPX strings to NOS. This is so noone would get the idea this is UPX. I would not have found out if I had not just tried. They did not change any functionality but the checksum algorythm, which aims only to hindering people to extract their package and to make it more difficult to decompile or stuff like that. The uncompressed SFX does not work with the package though, since they have some kind of header checksum which does not fit the uncompressed SFX header. But the uncompressed header works throwing an error message such as "Wrong SFX header checksum". So it is not corrupted or something. If you want to know how to build an UPX for decompressing Adobe SFX headers search for "Netopsystems UPX" in comp.compression newsgroup. I posted instructions there. I also send an E-Mail to Mr. Oberhumer, so he actually knows what is going on. I would like to see an injunction like in the Fortinet case since I am sure they make alot of money with selling their stuff to companies like Adobe and McAfee or Hewlett Packard, so its time to tell them, whose software they are really selling there.
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