[Box Backup] Additional information for Volume Snapshot Service (Shadow Copy)

[Matthieu Patou]

>>> It doesn't eliminate the issue for GPL, because Microsoft's license
>>> explicitly forbids linking any of their code against GPL code and
>>> distributing the resulting binaries. However, BSD code does not fall
>>> under that restriction.
>>>
>>> It's against the spirit of the GPL because it requires users to download
>>> and use non-free software to rebuild their free software, in addition to
>>> the non-free OS which they already have.
>>>
>>> Cheers, Chris.
>> I'm wondering how bacula do it with this limitation ?
>> Because they are compiling with this library and their code is GPL.
>>
>> I reread the licence for the VSS SDK and it's not really clear the
>> licence for those two libes in the lib directory (vss_uuid.lib and
>> vss_api.lib)
>
> As I mentioned in another posting back in March 2009 [1], the Bacula
> project gets around the GPL "restriction" (actually: liberations) by adding
> a special clause that allows linking their GPL code with proprietary
> libraries.
>
> A similar topic came up recently on the Bacula list again [2], and it
> appears that perhaps there will be some progress towards having Free,
> reverse-engineered header files. On the MingW list there is yet another
> discussion on how to go about such a reverse-engineering process, and I can
> see that Chris is actively participating [3].
>
> It would be great if all the pieces would fall into place at some point,
> however I believe that a practical "in the meantime" approach would be a
> licensing exception, which, as Chris confirmed, would actually not even be
> required for Box Backup's BSD-style license.
>
Achim my question was not in the sense of problems of GPL with 
proprietary software but the opposite.
Chris stated that the Microsoft's license explicitly forbids linking any 
of their codes against GPL. First I read the VSS licence and I didn't 
find this (but I am not a lawyer so I might have misunderstood some 
parts), and if it's true then I am wondering how Bacula manage to 
respect Microsoft license.

Matthieu.