Licensing of 3.0.2 OSE ?
Hi all - A licensing question about syslog-ng was sent to me privately recently and I thought it would be best to forward it to this list for comments.
We have been using syslog-ng-1.6.2 in our product for quite a few years now. We received a case recently on syslog-ng which prompted us to get the newer version of syslog-ng. We took the syslog-ng_3.0.2 open source edition and replaced the older one with this.
We see that the licensing has changed from GPL to BalaBit Proprietary License since syslog-ng version 3.0.1. The license remains GPL till syslog-ng version 2.1.4.
My question here is, can we build the newer open source syslog-ng which has the Balabit propriety license and distribute it to our customers as part of our product?
I replied that the COPYING file in the 3.0.2 tarball says GPL, so I don't understand the question. The person's reply was:
Joe,
I missed out on mentioning that part to you. The COPYING is GPL. But in the spec file we see the following.
# # Specfile used by BalaBit internally. # Summary: Next generation system logging daemon Name: syslog-ng Version: 3.0.1 Release: 1 License: BalaBit Proprietary License
And this is seen when you do rpm -qi :
[root@n10 ~]# rpm -qi syslog-ng-xx-3.0.2-1 Name : syslog-ng-xx Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 3.0.2 Vendor: Balabit IT Ltd. Release : 1 Build Date: Mon 07 Dec 2009 06:40:22 PM IST Install Date: Thu 10 Dec 2009 02:01:43 PM IST Build Host: builder.mycompany.com Group : System Environment/Daemons Source RPM: syslog-ng-xx-3.0.2-1.src.rpm Size : 554028 License: BalaBit Proprietary License Signature : (none) Packager : Tamas Pal <folti@balabit.com> URL : http://www.balabit.com Summary : Next generation system logging daemon Description : Syslog-ng is a next generation system logger daemon which provides more capabilities and it has a more flexible configuration then the traditional syslog daemon.
On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 14:00 +0000, Fegan, Joe wrote:
Hi all - A licensing question about syslog-ng was sent to me privately recently and I thought it would be best to forward it to this list for comments.
We have been using syslog-ng-1.6.2 in our product for quite a few years now. We received a case recently on syslog-ng which prompted us to get the newer version of syslog-ng. We took the syslog-ng_3.0.2 open source edition and replaced the older one with this.
We see that the licensing has changed from GPL to BalaBit Proprietary License since syslog-ng version 3.0.1. The license remains GPL till syslog-ng version 2.1.4.
My question here is, can we build the newer open source syslog-ng which has the Balabit propriety license and distribute it to our customers as part of our product?
I replied that the COPYING file in the 3.0.2 tarball says GPL, so I don't understand the question. The person's reply was:
this spec file was since gone and has ever only been used by our internal build system. So the OSE is under the GPL as you can see on all .c/.h files
Joe,
I missed out on mentioning that part to you. The COPYING is GPL. But in the spec file we see the following.
-- Bazsi
Hi Baszi,
From maximum rpm: The copyright line is used to hold the packaged software's copyright information. This makes it easy to determine which packages can be freely redistributed, and which cannot.
The copyright line in the spec file has been replaced with the license line. As the license tag of the rpm is determined by the (internal) specfile, the published rpm and the COPYRIGHT file indicate different licenses. As the question sent to Joe Fagan indicates, this leads to confusion. $ rpm -qip syslog-ng-client-3.1beta1-1.rhel5.i386.rpm warning: syslog-ng-client-3.1beta1-1.rhel5.i386.rpm: Header V4 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 2aa28252 Name : syslog-ng-client Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 3.1beta1 Vendor: BalaBit IT Ltd. Release : 1.rhel5 Build Date: Wed 02 Dec 2009 12:11:20 PM CET Install Date: (not installed) Build Host: hapci.balabit Group : System Environment/Daemons Source RPM: syslog-ng-client-3.1beta1-1.rhel5.src.rpm Size : 6718300 License: BalaBit Proprietary License Signature : DSA/SHA1, Wed 02 Dec 2009 12:11:22 PM CET, Key ID 3bdaf86d2aa28252 Packager : Tamas Pal <folti@balabit.hu> URL : http://www.balabit.com Summary : Next generation system logging daemon To avoid any confusion, it is better to change the spec file. It requires little effort :). Kind regards, Siem Korteweg -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: syslog-ng-bounces@lists.balabit.hu [mailto:syslog-ng-bounces@lists.balabit.hu] Namens Balazs Scheidler Verzonden: maandag 14 december 2009 15:22 Aan: Syslog-ng users' and developers' mailing list Onderwerp: Re: [syslog-ng] Licensing of 3.0.2 OSE ? On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 14:00 +0000, Fegan, Joe wrote:
Hi all - A licensing question about syslog-ng was sent to me privately recently and I thought it would be best to forward it to this list for comments.
We have been using syslog-ng-1.6.2 in our product for quite a few years now. We received a case recently on syslog-ng which prompted us to get the newer version of syslog-ng. We took the syslog-ng_3.0.2 open source edition and replaced the older one with this.
We see that the licensing has changed from GPL to BalaBit Proprietary License since syslog-ng version 3.0.1. The license remains GPL till syslog-ng version 2.1.4.
My question here is, can we build the newer open source syslog-ng which has the Balabit propriety license and distribute it to our customers as part of our product?
I replied that the COPYING file in the 3.0.2 tarball says GPL, so I don't understand the question. The person's reply was:
this spec file was since gone and has ever only been used by our internal build system. So the OSE is under the GPL as you can see on all .c/.h files
Joe,
I missed out on mentioning that part to you. The COPYING is GPL. But in the spec file we see the following.
-- Bazsi _____________________________________________________________________________ _ Member info: https://lists.balabit.hu/mailman/listinfo/syslog-ng Documentation: http://www.balabit.com/support/documentation/?product=syslog-ng FAQ: http://www.campin.net/syslog-ng/faq.html
On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 15:54 +0100, Siem Korteweg wrote:
Hi Baszi,
From maximum rpm: The copyright line is used to hold the packaged software's copyright information. This makes it easy to determine which packages can be freely redistributed, and which cannot.
The copyright line in the spec file has been replaced with the license line.
As the license tag of the rpm is determined by the (internal) specfile, the published rpm and the COPYRIGHT file indicate different licenses. As the question sent to Joe Fagan indicates, this leads to confusion.
$ rpm -qip syslog-ng-client-3.1beta1-1.rhel5.i386.rpm warning: syslog-ng-client-3.1beta1-1.rhel5.i386.rpm: Header V4 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 2aa28252 Name : syslog-ng-client Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 3.1beta1 Vendor: BalaBit IT Ltd. Release : 1.rhel5 Build Date: Wed 02 Dec 2009 12:11:20 PM CET Install Date: (not installed) Build Host: hapci.balabit Group : System Environment/Daemons Source RPM: syslog-ng-client-3.1beta1-1.rhel5.src.rpm Size : 6718300 License: BalaBit Proprietary License Signature : DSA/SHA1, Wed 02 Dec 2009 12:11:22 PM CET, Key ID 3bdaf86d2aa28252 Packager : Tamas Pal <folti@balabit.hu> URL : http://www.balabit.com Summary : Next generation system logging daemon
To avoid any confusion, it is better to change the spec file. It requires little effort :).
True enough, but it is not that spec file anymore. And there was a minor piece of information missing: that it was our packages that had the problem and not packages that the original poster built using our spec file. The latest binaries that we ship are not built from source, instead they are built into binaries on a generic linux distro (Debian etch in our case) then repackaged into RPMs with all dependencies. This way you don't have to fetch dependencies one-by-one. I've now fixed this and thus it will be fixed in the next release. Thanks for letting me know. -- Bazsi
participants (3)
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Balazs Scheidler
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Fegan, Joe
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Siem Korteweg