[Pkg-samba-maint] [ANNOUNCE] Samba 3.2.0 Available for Download

[Ana Guerrero]

On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 12:47:03AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 07:28:50AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > > This is the first stable release of Samba 3.2.0.
> 
> > OK, now we have to make the decision: shall we provide it in lenny?
> 
> > I was initially against that (too close to the release, follow release
> > managers' wish to not bump upstream versions too close from the
> > release, etc.) but upstream insisted for us to use 3.2 in our next
> > stable release.
> 
> > Steve seemed also in favour of providing 3.2 *if we can*.
> 
> > So, I'm now more inclined to say "let's go for it".
> 
> > The only blocker I see are licensing reasons. GPLv3 and programs that
> > build against libsmbclient.
> 
> > I have not investigated this yet because I think that Steve would be
> > more efficient than me on this..:-)
> 
> Here's the original list of packages I found in Debian that depended on
> libsmbclient and appeared to be licensed GPL v2 only according to
> debian/copyright:
> 
> gnome-cups-manager
> mplayer
> smbc
> smbnetfs
> 
> And then, of course, we have kdebase.
> 
> Jelmer pointed out back then that smbc is listed upstream as having an "or
> later" license.
> 
> I've inspected the gnome-cups-manager source, and all references to the GPL
> in the upstream source actually have the "or later" boilerplate.
> 
> A second look at mplayer shows debian/copyright currently quotes the "or
> later" boilerplate, so I'm willing to assume this is applicable to the whole
> work.
> 
> The current version of smbnetfs in the archive also lists "or any later
> version".
> 
> That leaves only kdebase to resolve.
> 
> I've heard from Simo Sorce, the member of the Samba Team who's responsible
> for samba packaging at Red Hat, that they consider the license issue
> resolved and that the next version of Fedora will include samba 3.2 only,
> with KDE linked against it.
> 
> Can the KDE team confirm that this is accurate, and whether the relicensing
> of kdebase applies to the 3.5.9 version currently in lenny, or if it only
> applies to KDE 4 versions?
> 
> I think either way we should try to push forward with samba 3.2 for lenny;
> it's just a question of whether we also have to invest time into getting a
> GPLv2 libsmbclient package ready.
>


When we talked about this some months ago, nobody looked at the exact KDE files 
because the main blocker was Qt3 licence, but this was updated in the beginning 
of this year to GPL v3 too and current qt3 is lenny has an updated copyright file.

Then, in kdebase it seems the only code that links against libsmbclient is the 
smb kioslave, the code is placed at kdebase/kioslave/smb/ and all the headers 
say GPL v2.1 or later. If somebody wants to take a quick check to see if i am
overlooking something is welcome.

About KDE 4, Qt4 is gpl v3 too and what needs libsmbclient should be looked
at, but a relicensing in this case will be easy to get, i think :)

Ana

[1] http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_Relicensing