On Wednesday 07 January 2009 21:59:45 Hendrik Weimer wrote: > Kern Sibbald <k...@sibbald.com> writes: > > 1. Build it from source yourself (perfectly legal -- only distribution > > violates the GPL license). > > The question is whether it is legal to distribute the Bacula sources > (including parts depending on OpenSSL) to begin with. These are > uncertain legal grounds to say the least.
I personally don't believe that such distribution is a problem -- after all Debian does distribute pure GPLv2 code and OpenSSL source code on the same ISO image. Problems of mismatched licenses apparently occur when forming and distributing a "mixed" binary program or when mixing different licenced source code in the same file and distributing it. As far as I know Bacula 2.4.x does not mix source code with different licenses in the same source file (we simply call libraries that when executed are incompatible), and Debian as well as its derivatives have decided not to form a Bacula binary using the offending libraries. In any case, there are many other programs that have far worse problems than the old Bacula code. Most of the Bacula problems involve code copyrighted by FSF, and the FSF is very well aware of the Bacula problem all the way up to RMS. They are also very well aware that I take those problems seriously and fixed them a long time ago. For these kinds of "technical" problems, I certainly hope that no one would not want to simply stop supplying the source code -- that would likely hurt the users far more than helping the Free Software movement, and so far none of the authors of the pure GPLv2 code have complained. I resolved the problem long time ago, so I consider it just a question of ensuring a conservative, smooth transition from the old code the new code. If someone is really concerned by the "legality" of using the old source, then they should feel free to use the new code (beta), which has absolutely no license problems. Regards. Lerm > > > 2. Wait for version 3.0.0 (currently in Beta testing as version > > 2.5.28-b1). This version has no licensing problems (pointer to > > details for version 2.4.x provided by John) and so Debian will be > > able to release it with OpenSSL compiled in. > > Ah, that's good to hear! > > Hendrik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
