[Bacula-users] Status Report

Hello,

I would like to discuss the following topics:

1. Bacula Release Status

2. The FSFE and licenses

3. Vacation

1. Bacula Release Status
As probably know, the latest release of Bacula version 7.2.0 was released
on 14 August 2015. This should be a quite stable release because it is
based on the latest Enterprise version, which is well tested. However,
it also has a some new refactored code. The new code has been very
well tested on Linux, but I expect a few compilation problems on other
OS versions such as Solaris and FreeBSD where I did not unfortunately
have time to test this release (see point 3 below).

2. The FSFE and licenses
In my last Status report of 15 April 2015, I mentioned that the relationship
that the FSFE and Bacula have had since 2006 was in the process of changing.
The latest status of that change has been published at:

   https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150817-01.en.html

I repeat here what I wrote in the last status report in April:

   As many of you know in 2006, I signed a Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA)
   that gave the FSFE the exclusive copyright for the Bacula.org software.
   That means that they had the responsibility to protect the software.  In
   2006, I felt that the Bacula project needed protection and guidance
of the
   FSFE and their FLA process, and I was pleased to have their help.  As the
   project has grown and become more global and solid, I feel that I can
more
   efficiently manage this responsibility myself, and I thank the FSFE for
   their help over the years.

   The Bacula.org software that has been released will always remain Free
   Software, and it is not possible for anyone to change that fact.  I have
   been writing and releasing free software and open source software since
   1972, and as I have stated many times, I am and will remain a very strong
   supporter and creator of open source software, and future Bacula.org
   community software will always be open source.

The bottom line is: this is a consolidation of the copyright holder, and
there
is no practical change for Bacula users. From a licensing stand point, we
will have most, if not all, the licenses held by a single party (ultimately
the Bacula Foundation) rather than held by two different parties (FSFE and
myself).

If you have never signed a Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) with the FSFE,
you need do nothing.  If you have previously signed an FLA with the FSFE
(even if you also signed one with me), then you would do the Bacula project
(and me) a big service by going to:

   www.bacula.org -> General -> License

and then click on the Copyright Assignment Agreement link at the bottom
of that page, print it, fill it out, sign it, and send it to me either
by regular mail or as a scanned pdf of all pages.

3. Vacation
Backporting the Enterprise code to the community was a big and hard project
because the code bases had significantly diverged, but it is now done.
Consequently, I will be on vacation in the USA and Canada between now
and the
first week in October.  There will be a maintenance or bug fix release
with at
least one new feature probably in November to cleanup any new bugs and the
build problems.

Thanks for using Bacula.

Kern

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