[Box Backup] Competition, development, future direction?

Chris Wilson chris at qwirx.com
Sat Apr 12 20:58:23 BST 2014


Hi all,

On Sat, 8 Feb 2014, Chris Wilson wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Charles Lecklider wrote:
>
>> Once upon a time I had a working (albeit extremely basic) MMC snap-in
>> for BB. Unfortunately, while I wasn't paying attention the license
>> changed to GPL, so I can no longer link lib/backupclient (there used to
>> be a dependency on lib/backupstore too, but I think recent restructuring
>> has removed that - I've not checked in detail yet); yes, obviously I can
>> start parsing the output from bbackupquery and so forth, but there are
>> too many problems with that approach for me to be comfortable with it.
>> 
>> On the 17th January 2011 I asked about getting those two libs put under
>> the LGPL. On the 18th Chris said:
>> 
>>> Does anyone have any objections to either:
>>> 
>>> 1. Relicensing lib/backupclient under a dual LGPL-BSD license, or
>>> 
>>> 2. Relicensing lib/backupclient under the BSD license (without advertising 
>>> clause)?
>> 
>> But I think that's as far as things went.
>> 
>> If you read the LICENSE file, lib/backupclient and lib/backupstore are
>> only GPL. I don't think they need to be BSD at all, so it's just a
>> matter of changing two libs from GPL to LGPL, nothing more.
>> 
>> I know having an MMC snap-in won't directly help the *nix side of
>> things, but my feeling is that allowing the UI to link to BB would allow
>> more flexibility which in turn may produce better results.
>> 
>> In any case, I can't see how the license change would hurt.
>
> I am still slightly against changing the license again. The reason I wanted 
> the GPL license in the first place (apart from compatibility with readline, 
> which we may have lost by using a modified GPL, and by requiring openssl) was 
> to ensure that any improvements made to Box Backup, by anyone, came back into 
> the public domain.
>
> Are you so against the GPL that you cannot have your code published under it 
> at all? Or are you restricted by the license on some other code that it links 
> with?
>
> I would consider dual-licensing the library parts under both the original 
> license (Ben's license, BSD with attribution) and the GPL, so you could 
> distribute the MMC snapin using that license. But it's already complex and I 
> don't really want to make it more complex if I can avoid it.

I have not heard any objections to such a relicensing.

I am still not keen on the 2-clause BSD license, because it allows people 
to make commercial products using our work without either giving credit or 
contributing back to the community.

So what I propose is to END the current mixed license state, and relicense 
the ENTIRE code base under the same license, a dual license which allows 
you to use it under:

* EITHER the original Box Backup BSD license, the 4-clause BSD license 
with advertising clause: 
https://www.boxbackup.org/browser/box/trunk/LICENSE.txt?rev=2290

* OR the Box Backup GPL, which is GPLv2 with exceptions to allow linking 
against OpenSSL and VSS libraries.

The reason is that:

* This requires all redistribution of the code or resulting binaries to 
EITHER give us credit OR include the full source code under the GPL, 
satisfying my requirements.

* Hopefully it will allow Charles' derived works to be released and 
distributed.

* The Box Backup GPL version satisfies Fedora's license requirements, 
because it can be used under the GPL without complying with the obnoxious 
advertising clause.

On 2010-01-23 we relicensed the core libraries under BSD 2-clause and the 
Box Backup GPL. The BSD 2-clause license is less restrictive than the 
original 4-clause version, and thus we can restrict the license on this 
code further (relicense as above) without additional permission from 
coyright holders.

The Box Backup libraried (lib/bbackupd and lib/bbstored), daemons and 
tools were licensed under the original Box Backup license until r2596, and 
the Box Backup GPL since then. So to dual license them would require 
permission only from the contributors whose code has been added since 
r2596 to allow their code to be dual-licensed under the original Box 
Backup BSD license as well.

Apart from me, the only other direct committer was James O'Gorman:

r2680 | jamesog | 2010-04-11 17:18:00 +0100 (Sun, 11 Apr 2010) | 2 lines
r2854 | jamesog | 2011-01-19 23:01:54 +0000 (Wed, 19 Jan 2011) | 5 lines
r2860 | jamesog | 2011-02-19 17:25:33 +0000 (Sat, 19 Feb 2011) | 2 lines
r2948 | jamesog | 2011-04-28 21:55:26 +0100 (Thu, 28 Apr 2011) | 2 lines
r2951 | jamesog | 2011-05-01 17:34:15 +0100 (Sun, 01 May 2011) | 2 lines
r2952 | jamesog | 2011-05-01 22:14:59 +0100 (Sun, 01 May 2011) | 2 lines
r2953 | jamesog | 2011-05-02 12:21:33 +0100 (Mon, 02 May 2011) | 6 lines
r2954 | jamesog | 2011-05-02 12:25:49 +0100 (Mon, 02 May 2011) | 5 lines
r2955 | jamesog | 2011-05-02 14:17:45 +0100 (Mon, 02 May 2011) | 2 lines
r2956 | jamesog | 2011-05-02 14:36:11 +0100 (Mon, 02 May 2011) | 2 lines
r2979 | jamesog | 2011-08-21 11:20:08 +0100 (Sun, 21 Aug 2011) | 2 lines
r3110 | jamesog | 2012-05-24 21:01:14 +0100 (Thu, 24 May 2012) | 4 lines

and the patches by other people that I merged were:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r2835 | chris | 2011-01-09 01:56:36 +0000 (Sun, 09 Jan 2011) | 5 lines

Fix incorrect generation of temporary file name for applying
patches while restoring old versions of files, many thanks to
Matto Marjanovic for debugging this issue and submitting a
patch!

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r3027 | chris | 2011-10-18 00:19:48 +0100 (Tue, 18 Oct 2011) | 3 lines

Patch to support building on MinGW, thanks to Paolo Tosco
(http://open3dalign.org, http://open3dqsar.org)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r3034 | chris | 2011-10-31 21:09:45 +0000 (Mon, 31 Oct 2011) | 2 lines

Improve error message on bbackupd command socket bind failure, thanks to 
Christophe.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r3111 | chris | 2012-05-26 19:13:01 +0100 (Sat, 26 May 2012) | 10 lines

bbackupquery readline improvements, thanks to Paolo Tosco:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r3181 | chris | 2013-09-02 23:10:21 +0100 (Mon, 02 Sep 2013) | 2 lines

Fix missing include, thanks Arnaud.

So if I can get explicit permission from these authors: James O'Gorman, 
Matto Marjanovic, Paolo Tosca, Christophe and Arnaud, then we can change 
the license as stated above.

If we don't get permission from a particular contributor then we could 
remove their contributed code.

I will contact these contributors individually asking for permission. I am 
setting a target date of 01/05/2014 for the relicensing. Please let me 
know before then if you have any objections.

Cheers, Chris.
-- 
_____ __     _
\  __/ / ,__(_)_  | Chris Wilson <chris+sig at qwirx.com> Cambs UK |
/ (_/ ,\/ _/ /_ \ | Security/C/C++/Java/Ruby/Perl/SQL Developer |
\__/_/_/_//_/___/ | We are GNU : free your mind & your software |



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