Re: Bacula and OpenSSL (original) (raw)

On Thursday 12 July 2007 18:06, Shane M. Coughlan wrote:

Hi Kern

Kern Sibbald wrote:

What I would like: I would like Bacula to be able to be freely used by all distros without licensing problems with any Open Source software including OpenSSL.

  1. Convert Bacula to use gnutls. One Debian user is working on this, but it is not a small nor an easy project. And though it is something I consider very worthwhile for Bacula to work with gnutls, it doesn't resolve the problem of using Bacula with OpenSSL.

I understood that you require OpenSSL for Bacula due to user demand, so you could not replace it by GNUTLS entirely. Is that correct?

Yes, that is essentially correct. gnutls could replace OpenSSL for nearly everyone, but some institutions such as banks and financial instututions may need the extra certification that OpenSSL has.

  1. You recently mentioned to me that GPL v3 may be a solution. Like Linus, I don't see any reason to switch to GPL v3, but if using GPL v3 makes Bacula compatible with OpenSSL AND all distros are happy with that, it seems to me to be an easy solution. I know that GPL v3 is compatible with the Apache license, but can you confirm whether or not it is compatible with whatever OpenSSL uses? I would also appreciate having Debian's legal view on this question.

There was the possibility that the final GPLv3 might turn out compatible with the OpenSSL licence. However, the published GPLv3 is not compatible with the OpenSSL licence. To be sure I also confirmed this with Brett Smith at FSF in Boston.

OK, thanks for the confirmation -- too bad.

  1. Barring item 2, it seems to me that the only solution is to eliminate all third party software from Bacula and change the license to less restrictive one that permits Bacula being linked with any Open Source software.

The issue flagged by Fedora concerned that third-party code. In essence: If you remove all the vanilla GPLv2 or later software from Bacula you could also move back to your previous GPL+extra clauses license, or to a GPLv3 + OpenSSL exception license.

OK, I think the possible solutions are pretty clear to me. Thank you for the rapid response.

Best regards,

Kern

Regards

Shane

-- Shane Coughlan FTF Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe Office: +41435000366 ext 408 / Mobile: +41792633406 coughlan@fsfeurope.org Support Free Software > http://fsfe.org

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