Dear Les Mikesell,

On 20.05.2016 00:19, Les Mikesell wrote:
>>
>> How does this relate to BackupPC?
>>
>> Not at all, I think. Because we do not want commercial business to
>> resell "enriched" BackupPC applications.
> 
> Why not?  If someone had a commercial device that needed a bit of
> proprietary code added to backuppc to access correctly, why would
> anyone be against allowing it to be linked into backuppc?

What would stop them to provide these bits to the main BackupPC source?
This exactly is the companies/entities like Intel, IBM, AMD, The
Raspberry Pie Foundation and so on contribute to the Linux kernel: They
make sure Linux runs on their hardware by providing the needed bits and
bytes in order to bring their hardware into the mainstream kernels. When
did you last bought a Linux machine where you had to get the kernel as a
binary from the manufacturer?


  That would
> be the equivalent, say, of gluing a proprietary database client into a
> perl module which is a better example of the need for dual-licensing.

So only the ones that pay for this solution get to use it? Translating
to BackupPC: Imagine that Microsoft decides to provide a BackupPC client
that relies on some obscure transfer protocol MS is unwilling to open
source. So if you pay $$$ per server/user/year, you get seamless
BackupPC integration for MS systems. Then, OracleOS releases a similar
solution, although the two of them are not compatible because the do not
have to release the sources and neither will be willing nor able to
integrate the others protocol. Then Ubuntu, RedHat, (... you name it)
all follow this path.

Where does this leave you as a burdened administrator who just wants to
make sure the company survives the next crypto locker surge? And would
you recommend BackupPC to a fellow sysadmin well knowing that you need a
separate instance for every client OS you need to backup?


> Or even if someone created a much better user interface and packaged
> it as a product - why would that be a problem as long as the original
> still existed?
> 

Why shouldn't they release it to the public so all BackupPC users
benefit? Who knows, the BackupPC developers may be kind (and fair)
enough to openly praise them or even put this someones logo in the open
sourced user interface?

And, by the way, providing a new BackupPC user interface already is
possible. You just have to write something from scratch that can drive
the BackupPC server component and you even can make it closed source.
Because the front end only has to use the back end API in order to
provide the functionality required. No license violation required (at
least not until the US courts finally decide if an API is copyrightable
(ann if yes, this would apply to the US only, one would hope)).


With kind regards

Stefan Peter

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