Re: Commercial file-server software

From: Steve Horsley (steve.horsley_at_gmail.com)
Date: 09/14/05 

Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 20:51:16 +0100

sutil83 wrote:
>
> But in response to other posts, this will be re-distributed out of our
> company and if used, Samba will be included, incorporated and used.
> Whether or not it is modified now is irrelevant, the lifespan of this
> product is intended to be decades. The real fear that the legal
> department here has (and other out of company entities that I can't
> name), is that sometime in the life of the product, updates, upgrades
> or whatever might occur. Basically there is a possibility that
> something might happen that would require a change in source code, in
> this case the GPL code.
>
> So either a restriction is placed or we just don't use open-source at
> all. The decision was made to generally avoid open-source since who
> knows the implications of a restriction of that sort, a decade from now
> when the product needs a slight tune-up. Also, a change might need to
> be made right off the bat, even before distribution. All these
> "maybe's" don't sit well and the more of those there are, the more
> likely the client boots us.
>
> The situation is a hard one since what will be done to Samba, or
> anything of the sort, is unknown at this point. Which is why I was
> looking for alternatives to avoid this whole fiasco. All the points
> you guys bring up are true and I realized there are work arounds. All
> I attempted to do by this thread is possibly find an alternative.
> Dealing with legal over here is one matter that's hard enough as it is.
> Convincing the client is impossible. The possibility that any of
> their information becomes freely distributed is unnacceptable. Not
> even that it is, even just the POSSIBILITY.
>

I am having trouble understanding this. Am I right in thinking
that they are afraid that they MIGHT, one day, want to make
proprietary modifications to the file system they use, and
distribute it while keeping the modifications secret?

If that is the case, then you are right, they can't use GPL'd
code to do that with. Check the Samba license - it just might be
BSD or some other licence that does allow such parasitic behaviour.

How about if they go for Samba now, and reconsider the FS type if
they ever DO choose to ship a secret proprietary one instead?
You're right - I don't think there are any proprietary network
filesystems for Linux. Except, just maybe, Novell Netware,
although I doubt they'd support it on a Mac platform. And I doubt
they'd let you modify it and distribute those modifications.

The final solution would be to write or commission their own
network file protocol from the ground up. If they want to play
secret squirrel, let them. Except I'm not sure about linking it
to the Linux kernel - it may have to remain a user-space
implementation. So perhaps they should write their own O/S to run
it on.

Steve

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