Hi Wietse, On Thu 27/Feb/2014 15:00:31 +0100 Wietse Venema wrote: > > Second, I am not a legal expert, but by my reading the IPL (IBM > public license) permits making changes and distributing the resulting > program as long as one complies with the IPL. I will not comment > on combining code with IPL and other licenses. Ask a legal expert.
That will only be relevant in case someone else (not me) will want to distribute or modify the derived work, which is not likely. Perhaps I'll ask GNU if they can expand their statement, eventually. > Besides USING Postfix source code, there are other options: > > - Write a tool that TRANSFORMS fqrdns.pcre.txt so that it can be > used by a different mail system. That would immediately make > fqrdns.pcre.txt useful for a lot more people. Hmm... the common ground is looking up RBLs. A quite daunting target. > - RE-IMPLEMENT the Postfix functionality. Unlike some projects > Postfix has documentation that independently says how the software > must behave. If the software contradicts the documentation, the > code is fixed to comply. Yeah, that was my first thought too. But I'd feel quite silly doing so, because Postfix code looks clean and well written. It seems to require just some minor reverse engineering and a few changes to be ported. The true question, beyond legalese, is if you'd welcome such porting rather than considering it an unintended use of your publishing the sources. I'm unable to tell if that would favor migration between Postfix and Courier, and in what direction. It might just slightly increase the diffusion of the "Postix format", which I'd consider a good thing anyway. Regards Ale
