Hello, For non-English speakers, a "catch-22" in English means a situation in which there is no way out.
The following annoying and frustrating issue has come up with regard to the Bacula source code: As you probably know, Bacula is released with a modified GNU GPL licence. The Bacula license modifies the GPL to permit Bacula to link to OpenSSL. This was necessary because using MySQL libraries requires OpenSSL. This modification was suggested by Debian to bring Bacula in compliance with their procedures. The problem comes from including pure GNU GPL code, which is not compatible with the OpenSSL license, inside Bacula itself (there are something like 8 such files). This works in the same way that Debian would not allow Bacula as pure GNU GPL to link with OpenSSL. If Bacula uses any pure GNU GPL code then that code cannot be subject to the GNU GPL modifications, and that code technically cannot linked and distributed with Bacula because of OpenSSL. I suspect that a lot of GPL projects are in a similar situation, but they do not explicitly point out the exception as Bacula does. The real bummer here is that this issue was flagged by someone involved in the Fedora packaging process. From what I understand (I may be wrong here), Fedora and hence Red Hat will not use Bacula because it uses some pure GPL code and OpenSSL together raising potential license problems -- after the problems with SCO and threats from Microsoft, their license concerns are quite understandable. This is not a show-stopping issue because at least for the moment, no author of pure GNU GPL code is lodging a complaint. In addition as I mentioned in a previous email, this issue could potentially be resolved by GPL v3 (due at the end of the month, if I remember right) because it is compatible with the Apache license, which is apparently what OpenSSL uses. In the mean time, until this problem is resolved, I've freezed all inclusion of new GPL code (copyrighted by others) in Bacula. The really complicated aspect of the above is that if you build a program such as Bacula using all your own code, and you use OpenSSL then in linking it, you just happen to drag some GPL'ed code from some library directly into your binary (most libararies are shared objects so do not become part of your binary), as is the case with the statically linked Bacula used in the rescue package, you are in violation of the GPL if you distribute such a binary. It seems that the only solution is that if you use GPL code, you must use *all* GPL compatible code (not so easy), and if you don't use it, you shouldn't even use the system libraries if there is any chance they could be accidentally linked into your program. Best regards, Kern ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
