I would like to discuss the following topics:

1. Bacula Release Status

2. The FSFE and licenses

3. Vacation

1. Bacula Release Status
As probably know, the latest release of Bacula version 7.2.0 was released on 14 August 2015. This should be a quite stable release because it is based on the latest Enterprise version, which is well tested. However, it also has a some new refactored code. The new code has been very well tested on Linux, but I expect a few compilation problems on other OS versions such as Solaris and FreeBSD where I did not unfortunately have time to test this release (see point 3 below).

2. The FSFE and licenses
In my last Status report of 15 April 2015, I mentioned that the relationship that the FSFE and Bacula have had since 2006 was in the process of changing. The latest status of that change has been published at:

https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150817-01.en.html

I repeat here what I wrote in the last status report in April:

As many of you know in 2006, I signed a Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) that gave the FSFE the exclusive copyright for the Bacula.org software. That means that they had the responsibility to protect the software. In 2006, I felt that the Bacula project needed protection and guidance of the FSFE and their FLA process, and I was pleased to have their help. As the project has grown and become more global and solid, I feel that I can more efficiently manage this responsibility myself, and I thank the FSFE for their help over the years.

The Bacula.org software that has been released will always remain Free Software, and it is not possible for anyone to change that fact. I have been writing and releasing free software and open source software since 1972, and as I have stated many times, I am and will remain a very strong supporter and creator of open source software, and future Bacula.org community software will always be open source.

The bottom line is: this is a consolidation of the copyright holder, and there is no practical change for Bacula users. From a licensing stand point, we will have most, if not all, the licenses held by a single party (ultimately the Bacula Foundation) rather than held by two different parties (FSFE and myself).

If you have never signed a Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) with the FSFE, you need do nothing. If you have previously signed an FLA with the FSFE (even if you also signed one with me), then you would do the Bacula project (and me) a big service by going to:

www.bacula.org -> General -> License

and then click on the Copyright Assignment Agreement link at the bottom of that page, print it, fill it out, sign it, and send it to me either by regular mail or as a scanned pdf of all pages.

3. Vacation
Backporting the Enterprise code to the community was a big and hard project because the code bases had significantly diverged, but it is now done. Consequently, I will be on vacation in the USA and Canada between now and the first week in October. There will be a maintenance or bug fix release with at least one new feature probably in November to cleanup any new bugs and the build problems.

Thanks for using Bacula.

Kern