[Box Backup] Exclude lists

Jamie Neil boxbackup@fluffy.co.uk
Mon, 21 Feb 2005 22:22:35 +0000


Ben Summers wrote:
> I don't think I can give you permission to release the Box code under 
> the GPL. However, as I read the BSD license, there isn't a problem with 
> just including a lump of BSD code in a distribution as a separate 
> entity. I suggest you ask someone who knows!
> 
> Or perhaps you could require that Box Backup was built, and then link in 
> the .a files which are produced as part of the build process? Quite a 
> handy set of libraries.

My understanding of the BSD licence is that it allows anyone to do 
pretty much anything they like with the code provided they leave the 
copyright intact (the Microsoft Windows TCP/IP stack was derived almost 
entirely from the 4.3BSD Unix code), so if someone wanted to release a 
fork of the code under the GPL licence they would be entitled to do so.

However any changes made to that fork could not be merged back into the 
original codebase without explicit permission of the copyright holders 
of those changes, which is where the complications arise.

Projects that release their code under GPL but still want be able to use 
it commercially normally rely on either developing _all_ the code in 
house (e.g. MySQL), or require contributing parties to sign a waiver 
(e.g. Asterisk).

Personally I would like to see a boxbackup GUI which was loosely coupled 
and so was not affected by these licencing issues. I don't think 
providing both applications in a single installer is a problem.

Of course I may be misinformed :)

-- 
Jamie Neil | <jamie@versado.net> | 0870 7777 454
Versado I.T. Services Ltd. | http://versado.net/ | 0845 450 1254