samba license change
Jeff Spaleta
jspaleta at gmail.com
Tue Oct 9 18:07:59 UTC 2007
On 10/9/07, Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net> wrote:
> The soname should change for any incompatible change, and while it isn't
> a technical change, the license change is incompatible.
I'd have to agree. A licensing change on a library, that we know
causing an incompatibility with other packages that we include, is a
big enough deal that we really need a demarcation to make it easier to
avoid licensing violations. If the soname doesn't change in the
package that we ship, then I think we as a project are not acting in
good faith to help prevent licensing violations by the people using
our packages. I think this sets a bad precedent for licensing changes
in general.
In my mind, it comes down to this question. As a project as a whole,
and as individual contributors to this project, do we want to make
inadvertent licensing violations less likely or more likely?
Samba as a project has every right to re-license its codebase as it
sees fit. But at the same time, don't we as a distributor have some
responsibility to make sure we introduce that change in such a way to
minimize potential licensing violations? I think we do.
-jef
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