is a BSL licensed service acceptable for sysadminy use cases?

[Harald Sitter]

On Fri, May 28, 2021 at 12:52 PM Ingo Klöcker <kloecker at kde.org> wrote:
>
> On Freitag, 28. Mai 2021 12:36:35 CEST Andrius Štikonas wrote:
> > 2021 m. gegužės 28 d., penktadienis 11:25:49 BST Harald Sitter rašė:
> > > On Fri, May 28, 2021 at 11:43 AM Sune Vuorela <nospam at vuorela.dk> wrote:
> > > > On 2021-05-26, Anna “CyberTailor” <cyber at sysrq.in> wrote:
> > > > >> After 36 months, the code becomes Apache-2.0 licensed (the conversion
> > > > >> period)> > >
> > > > > So you can use old sentry versions, which are open source.
> > > >
> > > > +1. I think we should support free and open source software.
> > >
> > > I do too. I'm curious though: How does using the 4 year old software
> > > support the software more than using the eventually 4 year old
> > > software?
> >
> > By the way, isn't it 3 year old software. That probably doesn't
> > fundamentally change the discussion. Although, if you use Debian stable or
> > Centos, you probably are using a lot of 3 year old software.

(brainfart - the BSL fallback is 4 years, sentry lowered it to 3 ;))

> Sure, but in Debian and Centos security fixes (for officially maintained
> packages) are backported.
>
> Are security fixes backported for the now Apache-2.0 licensed versions of
> Sentry?

Good question. Does not look like it.

It is really just an old release, similar to say KF5.10. The code is
there and you could use it but there's zero engineering or support put
into it. I mean, why would they, their license offers the same
software freedoms (copy, modify, create derivative works,
redistribute, use) with the single restriction being that you cannot
use the software as a competing commercial offering, making the
realistic only benefactors of backport maintenance: competing
commercial offerings ;) because they can't use the current release.

HS