Re: Postfix

[wietse@porcupine.org (Wietse Venema)]

LaMont Jones:
> Wietse - any chance of getting it changed to read something like:
> 
>     ... of the Software you possess.  This revocation of the license shall
>     apply only to the possibly infringing intellectual property, and not
>     the rest of the Software.  If you are able to directly resolve the
>     claim with the plaintif, you may continue to use and distribute the
>     Software under the terms of this agreement, as further restricted by
>     the claim resolution.  This is IBM's entire ....

Licenses do change.

But I'm not sure I understand the problem.

If there is a conflict about a code module, say, the one that
emulates strerror() on pre-ANSI systems, IBM would be happy to
provide a non-infringing replacement.

If there is a conflict about, say, the use of buffered I/O over
UNIX-domain sockets for IPC between chrooted daemons (comparable
to someone patenting the exclusive OR cursor), then that pretty
much nukes the entire Postfix mail system.

I can understand there is pain when you are only using, say, the
vstream module because you needed something that stdio could not
do for you. In that case it would suck if you could not use the
vstream code just because there was a conflict about the mailbox
locking routine that you're not even using.

I will have to ask if partial license revocation is possible.

	Wietse