Legal question regarding products built with FreeBSD

[Bill Moran]

Jason Richmond <jedi_diah at yahoo.com> wrote:

> To Whom it May Concern,
>  
> I have built a NAS product that uses FreeBSD.  I have customized the kernel
> and built a custom web interface.  After reading through the FreeBSD legal
> section I am fairly certain that distribution of this product does not violate
> any licenses.  Is there any way that I can verify that this is the case?  I
> plan on having an attorney review this information.  However, I thought that
> contacting FreeBSD directly would keep me from overlooking anything important.

Legal disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, so this does not represent legal advice.
 I am not an official representative of FreeBSD, so my opinions are not the
 opinions of the FreeBSD or any related project.

With that out of the way.

No, you're not violating anything legally, doing what you say.

I think I can speak for many FreeBSDers when I say:
I hope your project is successful and lucrative.  You are not obligated, legally
or otherwise, to give anything back to the FreeBSD community if you are
successful, in fact, you don't even have to admit to your customers that your
product runs FreeBSD.  However, we hope you will share your success with the
FreeBSD community by proudly announcing that your product is based on FreeBSD,
and donating some of the profits you make back to the community by doing such
things as sponsoring developers such as Poul-Henning Kamp, or donating money
or hardware to the FreeBSD Foundation.  If you don't, however, at least come
back and tell the FreeBSD community about your success, so we can feel good
about what we've done. :)

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com