I'm currently stuck in a conundrum. After a fairly long brouhaha over at OpenBSD regarding Adaptec's unwillingness to release proper documentation for their hardware so that developers may legally and openly work on stable drivers for their SATA raid cards (among others), I realized that I needed to make a choice about what my companies were going to do with regards to moving to Free Software. When I say free, I mean that people are allowed to do what they wish with the software: use it, modify it, look at the source, steal it, copy it, burn it, rip it, spit on it, put proprietary changes in it, etc. Free as in free. This is an effort that will literally take years. I cannot make the necessary changes in our office immediately because of the productivity related impact it would have on our organizations. There is also the reality that we will be forced to continue to use non-free software to integrate with our customers. Where I can, however, I have decided that we are going to use free software. One situation involves our email servers. For years, I have been happily using Dan Bernstein's qmail. I even translated a FreeBSD related howto a few years ago, so that others could get it up and running as easily as I after reading Oliver Lehmann's original howto. The fact is, however, that Dan's licensing terms are not free. The most striking issue I have is:
If you want to distribute modified versions of qmail (including ports, no matter how minor the changes are) you'll have to get my approval. This does not mean approval of your distribution method, your intentions, your e-mail address, your haircut, or any other irrelevant information. It means a detailed review of the exact package that you want to distribute.
My understanding of this clause is that I cannot modify qmail source and distribute it without Dan's approval. Fine. That choice is within his rights and I respect that. But, I don't like it. This has led to a qmail installation that requires patch upon patch upon patch to achieve deal with many issues I now have with my email server. I want smtp-auth, smtp-tls/ssl, larger queues, integrated pop3 & imap services, virus scanning, spam scanning, etc. Under no circumstances do I think Dan is responsible for providing what I want, but I would like others or myself to be able to do so. Qmail has become a monster - if you wish to use it like many modern mail systems. I would be happy if someone were allowed to distribute such a beast without limitations. Free does not mean asking permission to change.
So, over the next two or so years (I figure it will take that long), I will start to move away from qmail to something like postfix - although, I still haven't figured out how free the IBM public license is, but at quick glance, it at least allows things that Dan's license doesn't - for example, modification and distribution without permission. Due to my familiarity with courier-imap, I'll probably continue to use it - even with my unrest over the GPL. The GPL is decidedly not free. It requires any changes be given back to the open source community for free. While I like the concept, I like free better.
I know that pragmatism will prevail in cases where the work needed will overshadow the desire for free software. I feel the difference between now and before, though, is that in every instance, where I need to make a decision, I will be searching far and wide for software that is free. This is not something I put much thought into before - unless I had the choice between paying and not paying. Thanks de Raadt and OpenBSD for opening my eyes.
