Sendmail 8.9.0
DAVID RANKIN
Todd Vierling writes:
}Sendmail 8.9 also has some very shaky licensing restrictions that "look like
}GPL," but is not. The sendmail 8.9 license has a "backdoor" allowing
}Sendmail, Inc. to funnel money from vendors that bundle it in a commercial
}product. Sendmail 8.8 used the classical Berkeley license, which allowed
}such bundling without compensation.
Of course, I Am Not A Lawyer, and this does not constitute an attempt
to offer legal advice.
I've read through the license included in Sendmail 8.9, and I can't
agree with the assessment that there is a backdoor. I hate that a good
Berkeley License product is no more. Moreover, it's not clear that the
license excludes "aggregate distribution", leading to "license virus"
possibilities because of other software packaged with the sendmail package.
As far as NetBSD software distribution goes, the new Sendmail should be
distributed in the gnu subtree, since it's GPL-like requirements make
it naturally fit with the GPL code. This will assist people picking up the
NetBSD distribution for resale, since the GPL code already requires
redistribution (but see the paragraph above...). Naturally, I dislike
seeing a good BSD License-covered utility replaced with a "GPL-Like
license" utility, but shipping without a working MTA bothers me more.
If the new Sendmail license is a serious philisophical problem for NetBSD
users (and by extension, the NetBSD Foundation), then there are two
alteratives I can see. The first is a "BSD Sendmail" project, with people
dedicated to maintaining and updating a BSD License Sendmail product.
I don't think such a project would be sustainable over the long haul,
but then again, I wasn't too sure about Linux and NetBSD at first. :)
The second would be to move Sendmail to a package, and adopt another MTA
as the standard. I happen to be a MMDF bigot[1] myself, but it suffers
from a combination of extreme bit rot and non-existant licensing terms.
Smail was always pretty decent, and its FTP home site is a NetBSD box,
but it's GPL code. (Maybe "we" can get the smail people some help with
the rewrite, and in return smail 4 can be BSD Licensed. :) Vmailer is a
thought, but it needs to get past beta before it can be considered
seriously. There's even qma*l, although the licensing restrictions
Bernstein requires pretty much excludes putting it in the tree.
As far as I can tell, NetBSD either keeps moving ahead with Sendmail,
integrates Smail as the new MTA of choice, or punts and waits for
someone (Vmailer, a "free" Sendmail group, etc.) to solve the problem
for us.
Thanks,
David
[1] I like the concept, at least. There's certainly a nice MTA in MMDF,
begging to get out. It's just too bad the code's been all but dead for
the last 3+ years.