samba license change

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 10:07 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Isn't this an argument for the Licence tags on RPMs, and for someone to
> run a depsolver over the packages, ensuring the packages do not rely on
> services with incompatible licences?
> 
> Bumping the soname just makes people recompile code, with no further
> indication as to what is incompatible.  Unlike and ABI change, the
> problem doesn't go away with a rebuild. 
> 

I think the problem people are trying to address is how to allow the 
packages which can only link to libsmbclient-GPLv2+ to do so while 
providing samba-GPLv3+ for everything else.  If we have an SONAME bump, 
then we can have a package for the programs which need GPLv2 and a 
package for the packages which are free to move on.

Without the SONAME bump we'd have to do one of the following:

* static library or private directory for libsmb-GPLv2+ and have the 
affected programs set up to find the library there.
* Rename the libsmbclient-GPLv2+ library so it has a different SONAME by 
virtue of its name.

The problem you bring up is also worthwhile but it is a separate issue 
(detecting of problems rather than how to address the problems once they 
are brought to light.)

-Toshio