I apologize if this is not the correct place to be reaching out with this issue. I am looking to get in touch and find out if the use of FreeBSD on custom hardware and then it being sold is legal under the foundation and security licensing and laws setup by FreeBSD. In my area their is a company building hardware and placing FreeBSD on it, and then selling the device under their own name. I am just trying to find out if this is legal and if not who should this be reported to etc? Thanks.
The link to the FreeBSD license: https://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html From my reading (I'm not representing the FreeBSD project, so take it with a grain of salt): If they redistribute in binary form, they must mention the FreeBSD copyright notice. It's probably much more useful if the company sends a mail to the stable@ mailinglist pointing to the hardware/product they sell, explain a bit about it and let us know that they use FreeBSD...
As far as I am aware (I am not a lawyer), it would actually be a bigger concern if they were advertising it as FreeBSD, they must follow the terms of use for the trademark: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/legal/trademark-usage-terms-and-conditions/ and the Logo: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/about/project/
Please contact the FreeBSD Foundation [1] with details if you have specific concerns. The PR system isn't really intended for general discussion on topics like this; please follow up on the FreeBSD forums [2] or on the FreeBSD-questions mailing list [3]. Links: [1] https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/about/contact-us/ [2] https://forums.freebsd.org/ [3] https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
Nor the correct place for this as has been reported in Comment 3.