On Wednesday, March 7 at 04:15 PM, quoth Jason Frisvold:
As I understand it, the licensing for qmail basically says that you
can distribute the source code, distribute patches to the source
code, but not distribute any binary copies. Is that accurate?
Well, one thing you could *try* is reading the qmail license (or
rather, DJB's notes for distributors, as qmail technically has no
associated license). It's essentially two short paragraphs:
http://cr.yp.to/qmail/dist.html
READ IT.
Anyone who wishes to distribute qmail ***MUST*** read DJB's notes to
distributors FIRST. You cannot, in good conscience, rely on the advice
of third parties without knowing the facts of the situation for
yourself.
Based on that, would I be allowed to distribute an SRPM with the
original source and all my patches? (Please, no flamewars about my
choice of packager) Or does that violate the licensing?
Well, let's see:
You may distribute copies of qmail-1.03.tar.gz, with MD5 checksum
622f65f982e380dbe86e6574f3abcb7c.
In other words, if your SRPM contains a copy of qmail-1.03.tar.gz
whose MD5 checksum is as listed, then yes, you can distribute it.
I believe there's another package that distributes qmail in a binary
form, though the name escapes me at the moment.
You're probably thinking of Plesk, and the exact status of what they
have done is really rather nebulous (DJB has never clarified). Our
only assumption can be that Plesk is distributing binaries that appear
qmail-esque, and nothing more.
~Kyle
--
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind.
The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
-- Henry James
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