On Thursday 12 July 2007 16:36, Adam Thornton wrote: > On Jul 12, 2007, at 8:56 AM, Kern Sibbald wrote: > > On Thursday 12 July 2007 15:21, Dan Langille wrote: > >> On 12 Jul 2007 at 15:15, Kern Sibbald wrote: > >>> If no one wants to test the Win32 version and report back on it > >>> (particularly Vista, Vista VSS, and reparse points), I will test it > >>> myself. However, in that case, I am condering not making the > >>> binaries > >>> available on Source Forge, but on some other site and for a fee. Of > >>> course, you can build it yourself for free -- as is always the case. > >> > >> I like this idea. Perhaps it will encourage a company to devote > >> staff time to building the Windows binaries for all. > > > > I'm glad you like the idea. I am thinking about doing the same > > thing for all > > the Bacula binaries. > > > > Any company, University, or government would have to purchase the > > binaries (or > > build them for themselves). Any individual or charitable > > organization could > > download the binaries for free. Any company that had contributed to > > the > > Bacula project could download the binaries for free a number of times > > determined by their contribution, but at least once. Revenues > > received from > > this would be used to employ developers to produce some of the high- > > end > > features that we need. Obviously, the source will continue be fully > > available for anyone to build for themselves. > > How does this impact distributors? Specifically I am thinking of > Debian, but I think it's more broadly applicable. > > I would guess that since Bacula is GPL, there's no issue with third > parties distributing binaries, as long as they also provide source > for those binaries, but that sounds like something you want to > discourage if you plan to enforce your pay-for-binaries regimen and > actually collect a revenue stream from binary distribution. > > Are you planning on changing the license to forbid third parties from > doing so?
No, I'm not planning on changing the license to forbid anyone from creating and distributing Bacula. Bacula source is under a fiduciary license agreement with FSFE in order to guarantee that it remains Open Source. Anyone that wants to distribute Bacula can continue to do so as they are now. The only exception is that without some sort of agreement, they couldn't distribute binaries made by us. At this point, this is just an idea -- nothing is decided. So that there is no later confusion on this subject, there *is* a current licensing problem with Bacula brought up by Debian since the GPL v2 and the OpenSSL licenses are incompatible. The current Bacula license is pure GPL v2 with no modifications. I am discussing with Debian and FSFE modifying it by going to GPL v3 or some other license (not so easy) so that it can be linked with OpenSSL. This is a whole other topic that I would rather not discuss here though. The main point here is that my concept is not to limit anyone's freedom at least within the Free Software definition, but rather find some way to fund a faster Bacula development. One way is to offer tested binaries to "companies" for a modest fee. This would not stop anyone else from supplying binaries (except they could not resell our binaries without authorization). This goes hand in hand with the fact my work on creating a commercial service company next to Bacula, with three major objectives: - Ensure adequate support services to enterprises so that Bacula can penetrate the enterprise market faster. - To work hand in hand supporting existing and future independent level 2 Bacula service suppliers. - Generate revenues to fund Bacula development I have discussed this idea for something like a year now, and it has taken very clear form. I will have more to say on this subject probably over the weekend. Though it is possible, I will be a bit surprised if David has any serious objections to the direction it is taking :-) Best regards, Kern ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
