[ On Friday, September 7, 2001 at 12:20:59 (-0700), Jeremy C. Reed wrote: ]
> Subject: licensing (was Re: [Exim] Web based admin)
>
> As was mentioned in another email, sendmail is still the default even
> though its current licensing doesn't match the BSD project's desired
> goals. (On that note, I have slowly been working on a very simple,
> BSD-licensed, sendmail replacement [1] for sending email to a hub; it is
> for workstations and servers that are not "mail" servers; it is not an
> exim replacement, because it has no daemon or port listening
> capabilities.)
Actually on NetBSD both sendmail and postfix are offered as the
"default" mailers (i.e. their source is in the tree).
Both are considered by The NetBSD Foundation to be under "GPL-like"
copyright though, and both are found in the somewhat optional
"/usr/src/gnu/dist" subdirectory of the source tree.
(Note I don't speak for TNF)
> Sometimes I wonder how to ask Philip to consider using a BSD license, but
> I know if would be a lot of work since it may use other GPL'd code or
> contributors may have supplied code in the assumption that it is to be
> GPL'd.
There can be no "assumptions" made when accepting other people's code
for inclusion in a larger project. Either the copyright has to be
explicitly assigned, or it has to be clearly kept separate and its terms
have to be clearly followed (regardless of whether the style of
copyright license is the same as the project it appears within).
Note that in the latter case (i.e. where copyright for contributed work
is not assigned) the larger project is considered under most copyright
laws to be a collective work (and the author's own code within the
project is covered under his own separate copyright license).
In other words it's just as much work to maintain a GPL'ed source
product as it is to maintain one released under any other type of
copyright license! ;-)
(IANAL either, of course)
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@???> <woods@???>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
