[syslog-ng] Licensing of 3.0.2 OSE ?

[Fegan, Joe]

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 at 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 at 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.