Re: Bug#457318: ITP: qmail -- a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent

[amacater@galactic.demon.co.uk (Andrew M.A. Cater)]

On Sun, Dec 23, 2007 at 06:54:32PM +0100, Turbo Fredriksson wrote:
> Quoting Kalle Kivimaa <killer@debian.org>:
> 
> > Turbo Fredriksson <turbo@debian.org> writes:
> >> Why was it removed from Debian GNU/Linux in the first place!?
> >
> > It's never been in Debian. The source package is in non-free, as the
> > license didn't permit binary distribution. See e.g.
> > http://packages.debian.org/etch/qmail-src for some explanation.
> 
> So what changed? Did Bernstein change his licence!? And can't
> the qmail-src maintainer just upload a binary package?
> 

Qmail is now "in the public domain" as far as I understand it. No other 
licence - which may be problematic, except that djb's text says

"I hereby place the qmail package (in particular qmail-1.03.tar.gz 
with MD5 checksum 622f65f982e380dbe86e6574f3abcb7c) into the public 
domain. You are free to modify the package, distribute modified versions 
etc. " and then a paragraph stating that modifications are not 
encouraged and that identical interfaces should be maintained. 
[See, for more details, http://cr.yp.to/qmail/dist.html effective 30 
November 2007].

> 
> I fail to understand this ITP, and all the objections - wether
> or not we SHOULD is not the point as I see it. It's a matter 
> of CAN we.. ?
> 

We _can_ but the FSF aren't sure about the fact that modification is 
discouraged as I read it.

"The license of Qmail is not a free software license because it mostly 
prohibits the distribution of modified versions"

[Page last modified 2007-12-11 - not sure if that's an ISO or a US date 
so not sure whether that takes into account the licence changes - 
taken from http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/licenses.html ]

See also the Wikipedia article on License-free software though Russell 
Nelson and the OSI now regard it as OSI-free. 

> And wether or not Qmail is any good - MY opinion is that it kicks
> ANY MTA's but! Postfix and Sendmail both suck big time compared to
> the simplicity and speed of Qmail. Opinions are like a butt -
> everyone got one (sorry, couldn't remember the English equivalence
> of this old Swedish saying - but I asume that the point isn't lost :).
> 

Point taken.

> 
> So to be or not to be is irrelevant - the question is: are we
> ALLOWED to distribute it or not?
> 
Possibly, with caveats.

Just my 0.02 Euro c

Andy