Mailing List Archive

On Wed, 2004-02-04 at 08:44, James Couzens wrote:
> libspf v0.21 beta is now available for download from http://libspf.org
>
> Review the CHANGELOG (http://libspf.org/files/CHANGELOG) to see whats
> new.
>
> Some highlights:
>
> - Best guess support
> - Trusted Forwarder support
> - Completed qmail patch (all the config files are enabled now)
> - Sendmail patch almost ready (tonight?), needs updating to the new API
> - lovely bug fixes
> - 40% more fluff, and now in a larger package!
> - API almost complete
>
> The Qmail patch is now about as functional as it will ever be, and is
> now running on two my of MTA's. I'm still debating on whether or not to
> enable the tarpitting option Sean and I have been toying with since we
> started on the project but we'll figure it out sooner or later.
>
> Added some logging output in the following format:
> "[YY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS] result : email [ip], spfver, depth, error (if any)"
> which will allow you to create some stats hopefully. For those of you
> who want my MySQL version of this, drop me a line and i'll tidy it up
> and send it your way. It would be really cool if some of you would use
> the MySQL ability to all log some stats to a central server ^.^
>
> As always please submit bugs, suggestions, comments, etc.. they are
> always welcome.

MySQL's a sticky subject, but it sounds like a neat project.

<rant>
MySQL's license doesn't says I can't write my own MySQL client library
to log these things and distribute it with our product. However, the
people at MySQL maintain their license (GPL) prohibits this. Something
about the GPL applying to the use of the database and that any access of
the database would violate the GPL. Last time I checked, the GPL is a
copyright and they can't copyright an idea nor my work -- which leaves
them out of luck.

I wish they would amend their license with something like: "you must
distribute a commercial client license with any product released under
an non-GPL compatible license that accesses a non-commercially licensed
MySQL database." Then I would just buy licenses. As it is now, their
stance concerns and confuses me and I tend not to purchase things while
concerned or confused.

Sigh. I really like MySQL. I use it internally for many things. I
just need MySQL to align their "free" license with their intentions so
that everyone involved understands their rights.
</rant>

As a side note, you can do these sorts of things in postgres as well,
and then _everyone_ can play along. The upside here is that everyone
seems to be on the same planet when interpreting the copyright.

--
// Theo Schlossnagle
// Principal Engineer -- http://www.omniti.com/~jesus/
// Postal Engine -- http://www.postalengine.com/
// Ecelerity: fastest MTA on earth


-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h

In <1075905867.60470.346.camel@glaive.omniti.com> Theo Schlossnagle <jesus@omniti.com> writes:

> MySQL's a sticky subject, but it sounds like a neat project.
>
> <rant>
> MySQL's license doesn't says I can't write my own MySQL client library
> to log these things and distribute it with our product.

Correct.

> However, the
> people at MySQL maintain their license (GPL) prohibits this.

This is incorrect. MySQL has a dual license. It is available under
both the GPL and a commercial license, you get to choose which.

> Something
> about the GPL applying to the use of the database and that any access of
> the database would violate the GPL.

If you use a library that is not in the public domain (e.g. it has a
license), then you must follow the terms of that license in the
resulting combined code (the executable). This is because the
resulting combined code is a derivative work of both the library and
of the code you have created.

If the library in question is licensed under the GPL rather than the
LGPL, then your combined product must be compatible with the GPL,
which effectively means it must be open source software. If the
library had been licensed under the LGPL, then only the modifications
you have made to that library would need to be made available. Since
you usually don't modify the library, this usually means that you
don't have to do anything.

Since MySQL chose to release their libraries under a dual
GPL/commercial license, you need to make the choice of buying a copy
of the commercial product, or make sure your product is using an open
source license.


> Last time I checked, the GPL is a
> copyright and they can't copyright an idea nor my work -- which leaves
> them out of luck.

The GPL makes no claim to copyrighting an idea, nor your work. The
GPL also, however, doesn't allow you to do whatever you want with the
code.

> I wish they would amend their license with something like: "you must
> distribute a commercial client license with any product released under
> an non-GPL compatible license that accesses a non-commercially licensed
> MySQL database." Then I would just buy licenses. As it is now, their
> stance concerns and confuses me and I tend not to purchase things while
> concerned or confused.

That is pretty much what MySQL says. See
http://www.mysql.com/products/licensing.html



-wayne

-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h

On Wed, 2004-02-04 at 10:35, wayne wrote:
> > MySQL's license doesn't says I can't write my own MySQL client library
> > to log these things and distribute it with our product.
>
> Correct.

You'd think...

> > However, the
> > people at MySQL maintain their license (GPL) prohibits this.
>
> This is incorrect. MySQL has a dual license. It is available under
> both the GPL and a commercial license, you get to choose which.

Who did you talk to at MySQL that said something different? Who said
that my writing and distributing a non-GPL, from-scratch library that
talks to a MySQL server would be "okay"? I would like to know for future
reference.

I am not talking about the commercial license. I am talking about the
GPL. The fact that they dual license is irrelevant to my argument. I
choose the GPL and I choose to not use (or reference) their code and
write my own implementation of a mysql client talking over TCP/IP to
their server. Their claim is that my actions result in a derivative
work.

A detailed discussions of this (with voices of MySQL reps) is available
at:

http://www.edwardbear.org/serendipity/archives/1193_My_Beef_with_MySQLs_License.html

The whole discussion is interesting, but #4 and #8 are particularly
beefy. MySQL claims that a dependence on their software is a derivative
work, while the GPL says that linking constitutes that.

> > Something
> > about the GPL applying to the use of the database and that any access of
> > the database would violate the GPL.
>
> If you use a library that is not in the public domain (e.g. it has a
> license), then you must follow the terms of that license in the
> resulting combined code (the executable). This is because the
> resulting combined code is a derivative work of both the library and
> of the code you have created.

Not sure what you are talking about. The library I spoke of was written
here (given the topic sentence of my previous mail). It would is
"derived" from the output tcpdump. And given that for transformed
works, the copyright of the output maintains the copyright of the input,
it would stand to reason that the tcpdump output is copyright me because
it is nearly 100% my queries and 100% my data set as results.

> Since MySQL chose to release their libraries under a dual
> GPL/commercial license, you need to make the choice of buying a copy
> of the commercial product, or make sure your product is using an open
> source license.

Again dual licensing has nothing to do with it.

> > Last time I checked, the GPL is a
> > copyright and they can't copyright an idea nor my work -- which leaves
> > them out of luck.
>
> The GPL makes no claim to copyrighting an idea, nor your work. The
> GPL also, however, doesn't allow you to do whatever you want with the
> code.

They claim an "from-scratch" client library that accesses a MySQL server
is a derived work -- additionally, their viewpoint is supported by the
FSF. See the previous link.

> > I wish they would amend their license with something like: "you must
> > distribute a commercial client license with any product released under
> > an non-GPL compatible license that accesses a non-commercially licensed
> > MySQL database." Then I would just buy licenses. As it is now, their
> > stance concerns and confuses me and I tend not to purchase things while
> > concerned or confused.
>
> That is pretty much what MySQL says. See
> http://www.mysql.com/products/licensing.html

Thanks for making my point. That's what they say "about" their
licensing... but that _is not_ what the GPL says which _IS_ their
licensing.

Hence the discrepancy and confusion.

Again, I like MySQL and I like the people at MySQL. I like their
philosophy as well. There still no excuse for distributing MySQL under
the GPL and arguing that it marries up well with their philosophy when
it simply doesn't.

--
// Theo Schlossnagle
// Principal Engineer -- http://www.omniti.com/~jesus/
// Postal Engine -- http://www.postalengine.com/
// Ecelerity: fastest MTA on earth


-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h

On Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 05:44:15AM -0800, James Couzens wrote:
| libspf v0.21 beta is now available for download from http://libspf.org

nice work, thanks James!

| Added some logging output in the following format:
| "[YY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS] result : email [ip], spfver, depth, error (if any)"
| which will allow you to create some stats hopefully. For those of you
| who want my MySQL version of this, drop me a line and i'll tidy it up
| and send it your way. It would be really cool if some of you would use
| the MySQL ability to all log some stats to a central server ^.^

Might be easier to sidestep the licensing issues by just syslogging a
bunch of well-formed INSERT statements that can be tail -f | mysql

-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h

In <1075911426.60470.365.camel@glaive.omniti.com> Theo Schlossnagle <jesus@omniti.com> writes:

> I am not talking about the commercial license. I am talking about the
> GPL. The fact that they dual license is irrelevant to my argument. I
> choose the GPL and I choose to not use (or reference) their code and
> write my own implementation of a mysql client talking over TCP/IP to
> their server. Their claim is that my actions result in a derivative
> work.
>
> A detailed discussions of this (with voices of MySQL reps) is available
> at:
>
> http://www.edwardbear.org/serendipity/archives/1193_My_Beef_with_MySQLs_License.html

Ok, a few quick comments

1) IANAL. If you want legal advice, find a lawyer.

2) I have not read the webpage linked above, but I have skimmed it.
This isn't an issue that I want to get deeply involved in.

3) This webpage appears to have been written very recently (within the
last month or so). So I wouldn't call this a final resolution of
the issue, one way or the other.

4) I recall similar issues being discussed long ago. IIRC, it was
with the GPL'ed libgmp package. Again, IIRC, the FSF had their
lawyer investigate the issue so I suspect that have at least a
reasonably solid legal case for making their claims. Whether the
FSF would win in court is different question.

5) I suspect there are also a bunch of other cases involved in
"interface copyrights" for hardward devices, commercial software
and such. These cases may have actually went to court and
therefore may either strengthen or weaken the FSF's legal case.

6) If you want to have some fun, you should submit this story to
slashdot and sit back with a bowl of popcorn.

7) At this time, I'm not too worried about this issue.


-wayne

-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h

James Couzens wrote:
> libspf v0.21 beta is now available for download from http://libspf.org

Great, I've been looking forward to this!

Too bad it's a pain to compile on FreeBSD right now. The reasons for
this are:

1 - '-lresolv' is not needed in FreeBSD
2 - There is no native getopt, but there is a port called
devel/libgnugetopt which has what you need.

I attached a separate FreeBSD-only makefile and a tiny patch for
spfquery.c (compatible with everyone, hopefully) that will make libspf
compile in FreeBSD. Note to self: Remember to use 'gmake' instead of
FreeBSD's native 'make'.

> The Qmail patch is now about as functional as it will ever be, and is
> now running on two my of MTA's. I'm still debating on whether or not to
> enable the tarpitting option Sean and I have been toying with since we
> started on the project but we'll figure it out sooner or later.

I was unable to integrate this qmail patch into the existing FreeBSD
port as I have been able to with other qmail patches in the past, but I
downloaded netqmail and compiled it separately - and it seemed to
compile fine... after tweaking netqmail a bit :)

Note to FreeBSD users: To make netqmail work, I had to edit
'conf-groups' and change the 'nofiles' group to 'qnofiles' (that group
was created and used by the FreeBSD qmail port I was already using).

Now that it's compiled, I'll install it and report any bugs that may be.

--
Jim Ramsay
"Me fail English? That's unpossible!"

-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h

In <40212379.3050000@jimramsay.com> Jim Ramsay <lists@jimramsay.com> writes:

> --- spfquery.c.orig Tue Feb 3 23:16:48 2004
> +++ spfquery.c Wed Feb 4 08:50:38 2004
> @@ -53,7 +53,11 @@
> #include <stdio.h>
> #include "spf.h"
> #include "spf_head.h"
> -#include "getopt.h"
> +#ifdef __FreeBSD__
> + #include <getopt.h>
> +#else
> + #include "getopt.h"
> +#endif

Errh, this should always be <getopt.h>

Fixed in http://www.midwestcs.com/spf/tests


-wayne

-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h

On Wed, 2004-02-04 at 11:53, Jim Ramsay wrote:
> James Couzens wrote:
> > libspf v0.21 beta is now available for download from http://libspf.org
>
> Great, I've been looking forward to this!
>
> Too bad it's a pain to compile on FreeBSD right now. The reasons for
> this are:
>
> 1 - '-lresolv' is not needed in FreeBSD
> 2 - There is no native getopt, but there is a port called
> devel/libgnugetopt which has what you need.

That is GPLed, isn't. That would hinder the Apache-compatible license
of libspf.

Have a look at getopt_long.c from the NetBSD tree. That's a great place
to borrow from and give credit to ;-) It has a GNU compatible getopt
and getopt_long.

--
// Theo Schlossnagle
// Principal Engineer -- http://www.omniti.com/~jesus/
// Postal Engine -- http://www.postalengine.com/
// Ecelerity: fastest MTA on earth


-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h

Theo Schlossnagle wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-02-04 at 11:53, Jim Ramsay wrote:
>
>>2 - There is no native getopt, but there is a port called
>>devel/libgnugetopt which has what you need.
>
> That is GPLed, isn't. That would hinder the Apache-compatible license
> of libspf.
>
> Have a look at getopt_long.c from the NetBSD tree. That's a great place
> to borrow from and give credit to ;-) It has a GNU compatible getopt
> and getopt_long.

Well, I should say that this makefile is only necessary for freebsd 4.X
since 4.X's <unistd.h> only has getopt, not getopt_long. 5.X (which has
both) should just be able to include <unistd.h> instead of <getopt.h> in
spfquery.c and everything should work.

My fault for not upgrading yet :)

--
Jim Ramsay
"Me fail English? That's unpossible!"

-------
To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription,
please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname@Ë`Ì{5¤¨wâÇSÓ°)h