Release under a "free" license about tarsnap HOT 6 CLOSED

I'd love to see Tarsnap packages in debian, but I can't change the license. Tarsnap is commercial software, not open source software, and changing the license would make it too easy for the code to be repurposed in ways which result in me not getting paid (e.g., setting up competing tarsnap-compatible services). I BSD-license code whenever I can, but the commercial reality just wouldn't work here.

Could tarsnap go into the debian non-free archive?

from tarsnap.

If I was in your shoes, I doubt I'd make it freely available, so I can't complain too loudly. :)

I'd somehow forgotten about Debian's non-free archive. Thanks for the suggestion, I've raised an issue there: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=799214

from tarsnap.

Thank you for understanding. :-)

In case it helps with the RFP, there are debian packaging bits in the tarsnap source tree already: https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap/tree/master/pkg/debian

These were contributed to tarsnap 6 years ago and haven't been changed much since then beyond me updating the changelog; so I'm sure it could benefit from an experienced Debian developer looking it over, but it might be a useful starting point at least.

from tarsnap.

@cperciva

Tarsnap is commercial software, not open source software, and changing the license would make it too easy for the code to be repurposed in ways which result in me not getting paid (e.g., setting up competing tarsnap-compatible services).

I think what you need in this case is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Here, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

from tarsnap.

@etug80: thanks for your interest, but CC BY-NS-SA 4.0 is not suitable for tarsnap, since @cperciva already said that we do not want people to modify the code.

from tarsnap.

@etug80: we do publish some code related to tarsnap under the BSD license:

• scrypt, for secure key derivation
• spiped, the secure pipe daemon
• kivaloo, a data store for 255 bytes
• tarsnap-gui, still under heavy development

More information about our open-source work is available on
https://www.tarsnap.com/open-source.html

from tarsnap.