External idmap backend(s)

Matthew Mastracci matt at aclaro.com
Mon Feb 5 20:40:46 GMT 2007


Gerald (Jerry) Carter wrote:

> Simo's was dropped after some discussion.  The idmap backend
> has since been rewritten in the SAMBA_3_0 tree so I'd recommend
> you repatch against that.  However, I'm somewhat against
> accepting such a patch into the tree because it allows
> vendors to write clearly derivative works of Samba and bypass
> the GPL requirement.

The big reason we need this is to implement an LDAP mapping that is 
close-but-not-quite-the-same-as the current idmap_ldap stuff, but is 
easier to maintain as a bunch of shell scripts than writing and 
maintaining a new back-end that won't ever make it into the tree and 
updating a patch for it.

As a compromise, could it be possible to have the external backend ask 
the program/script for its license in the initialize method and fail if 
it is anything but GPL?  I know this is somewhat hokey, but it runs 
along the same lines as the MODULE_LICENSE() Linux kernel macro.  This 
would make it clear that the external script is a derivative work and 
must also be GPL.  It would be just as easy for them to patch in an 
external backend as it would be to patch out that check.



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