niq’s soapbox

Much has been said about the Debian/OpenSSL bug by people closer to it than I am. An expert view comes from Ben Laurie, who lays in to the Debian packagers for fixing an apparent bug locally, and not sharing it with upstream. In a second post, Ben clarifies some confusing issues, like whether OpenSSL is relying on uninitialised memory for entropy (not quite, but what it’s doing is not good either).

Ben’s wrath is well-deserved, but it seems to me there’s a fundamental reason why the OpenSSL folks must bear a share of the blame. Given the use of uninitialised memory, why wasn’t there a great big comment right there in the code, explaining it? Anything like that is sure to raise alarm bells in anyone reviewing the code, and send a programmer straight into fix-the-bug mode. And that’s an apparent-bug with a fix so simple that a compiler or runtime library could do it automatically. Don’t blame the Debian maintainer for fixing a blunder so trivial it must be a typo!

Why the “fix” went beyond just initialising that memory and broke it is beyond the scope of my (non-) research on the subject, and therefore this post.

UPDATE: Kudos to Michal Čihař for pointing out the upside to this sorry tale.

OK, I’ve re-licensed apr_dbd_mysql to permit distribution under the ASL 2.0 when aggregated with APR-UTIL.  Due to the licensing incompatibility, this is necessary if it is to be aggregated.  Which in turn makes life easier for end-users.

This follows recent discussion with the Debian packagers.  The original problem is discussed in more detail here.

My attention has just been drawn to Debian bugs 395959/403541 re: packaging the MySQL driver in apr-util. This is a legal problem of meeting the terms of all licenses involved.

That’s bad, because I believe packagers such as Debian are precisely the people best placed to make this integration available to end-users. Speaking as a key holder of the intellectual property in question, maybe I can help. I just posted an entry to the Debian bug tracker, but I’m not sure how that works. So I’ll blog it here for the record.

Hi,

Joachim has just drawn my attention to this report.

I am the original developer of the MySQL driver, and it was originally my decision to license it under the GPL. I’m also director of WebThing, and a member of the Apache Software Foundation (though not, in this message, speaking in an official capacity).

I’m not dogmatic about the licensing, and I’d be happy for it to change if it helps, subject to the constraints of the other licenses involved. Originally I’d have been more dogmatic about it, because apr_dbd_mysql released under the Apache license seems to risk undermining MySQL’s GPL rights, and I didn’t want to be responsible for that. However, MySQL AB has made it clear that they are happy to live with that: indeed, they explicitly name APR and the Apache license at http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/foss-exception.html

So the sticking point is no longer the GPL, but rather ASF policy, which does not permit us to distribute anything that would impose restrictions on our users, over and above those in the Apache License. The ASF takes the view that to take advantage of MySQL’s exception risks leaving our users in limbo. That clearly doesn’t apply to Debian: your primary license is after all the GPL.

A quick google reveals that some Linux distros have apr_dbd_mysql as a separate (RPM) package, and have presumably built apr-util to enable dynamic loading of a DBD driver. This seems to me an excellent solution.

I hope Debian will see a way to make this available for your users. If I can help, please ask.