[Box Backup] Box Backup licensing

Richard Hurt rnhurt at gmail.com
Tue Feb 2 11:00:12 GMT 2010


On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 4:41 PM, Chris Wilson <chris at qwirx.com> wrote:

> Hi Achim and all,
>
> On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Achim wrote:
>
>  One thing just came to my mind about the relicensing under BSD and GPL:
>> Back in June we had a (small) discussion about the possibility of linking to
>> Microsofts's VSS headers. I quote verbatim from my message then, and wanted
>> to ask if we could add that exception to the GPL version under which you
>> will release 0.11, in order to have at least the legal aspects covered, not
>> to talk about the missing implementation ;-)
>>
>
> Thanks for reminding me about this. It's actually a significant problem for
> relicensing Box Backup under the GPL, because we cannot legally link with
> OpenSSL.
>
> I have created a new license that includes similar exemptions to the ones
> used by Bacula, although I have reworded them because in my view the Bacula
> versions allow a significant loophole in the GPL, by allowing third parties
> to create customised versions of OpenSSL including whatever code they want
> (e.g. a competing backup application), and linking the GPL code against
> those libraries without disclosing the source.
>
> As this is a significant license change, I would like to point out that
> although I have committed the changes, they do not apply to any release
> currently made, and can be reverted easily if anyone objects. The most
> significant consequence is that it is not legal to distribute code linked
> against the both GNU readline library and either OpenSSL or VSS, as we had
> hoped it would be.
>
> I have therefore included another clause that allows distribution of the
> code and compiled binaries under the pure GPL, however I think this will be
> of limited utility as it does not legally allow linking to OpenSSL.
>
> You may view the changes here:
> [http://www.boxbackup.org/trac/changeset/2600]
> Please let me know if you have any objection to this new license.
>

My only objection is from a theoretical standpoint.  Creating yet another
new version of an open source license is generally a very bad thing and only
serves to confuse people and cause problems down the road.  I thought the
whole point of re-licensing was to clean this up.

--
Later...                                                                  ➣
http://KangarooBox.com - We make IT simple!
Richard                                                               ➣
http://MynaStuff.com - Keep track of your stuff.
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