Re: Where is the qmail Licence?

Hello,

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 04:24:57PM +0200, Frank Louwers wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 09:18:13AM -0500, [email protected] wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 03:40:48PM +0200, Frank Louwers wrote:
> > > The consensus is: "he won't sue you, so do with it what you like, as
> > > long as you don't make your own commercial product out of it"
>                            ^^^^^^^^
> > I do not think so: you certainly can distribute the source or
> > compliant binary packages for $.
> wasn't clear enough, but ment: modified (binary) package.

well, I'm _not_ convinced about this. The rules on his web site say
that if you want to do this, you need his written permission first.
But how to obtain that, I have no idea - I tried to talk to him several
times via email, but got no reply I can remember right now.

So, for me, the state of affairs is that *if* you distribute a modified
package, regardless whether it's for money or not, you risk being sued,
and then depend on being "nice enough" for him to not aggravate him
enough to actually do it.

Makes eg. preconfiguring Linux boxes with qmail instead of something
else, but patched a bit (eg. using Mate's errno patch set), illegal,
and does imho _not_ quite help to make Internet email much better,
but hey, it's his call what to do with his software...

In general, I think this is a stupid situation at least as long as we
don't see overdue qmail 1.04, and these legal uncertainties and
restrictions _have_ turned away numerous potential users. (Note that
the list of large qmail users has shrunk quite a bit, too, although
maybe for several reasons.)


Best,
--Toni++