Re: Where is the qmail Licence?

Hi,

[ please keep two problems separate: first, finding out what's
  permitted and what's not, and second, living with what's permitted ]


On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 12:09:50AM -0400, Russell Nelson wrote:
> Frank Louwers writes:
>  > other half, I can't, unless I manually patch and download and compile on
>  > the actual client server. 
> Right, because that's not distribution of modified binaries.

this is interesting. So far I was under the impression that it would
also have to be done at the client's site.

If I understand *you* correctly, selling an appliance type of box with
some qmail+patch(es) preinstalled would be ok, because after sale, the
box is the client's box and not mine, as well as fetching his box to eg
my site, installing there, and shipping it back. Confusing...


One side effect of the restrictive license, together with the
maintenance of the package, is that distributing an unmodified binary
becomes more and more impossible, thus forcing everybody to either
find a way to supply an imho large proportion of potential clients -
SMEs with no IT department of their own, but some kind of managed
firewall or mail server installation -  with modified qmail binaries,
or switch away from qmail. The reason is that while this type of client
should imho benefit from the robustness and security of qmail, they
can't be bothered to pay consultancy fees required to do it properly
on-site. They are also usually not hexed with sendmail compatibility...


It would be really nice if Dan would put together _one_ text that
contains all of the statements short of including law texts instead of
having to dig his site for bits and pieces, and if he would bundle this
text with the qmail source in an easily recognizable way, so it would
eg. be included in the package's MD5 sum, and easier to point at. This
should fix part of the confusion, although it does not help with the
underlying problem.

This type of discussion about legal problems imho illuminates _the_ one
huge drawback qmail has over every other Unix MTA that comes with
source, and which I'm aware of.

Apart from all of this, I'd really like to know the rationale behind
Dan's position.


Have a nice weekend,
--Toni++