"Many have criticized syslog-ng, a replacement for the syslog logging daemon with many additional features, for not being open enough. Syslog-ng has a closed-source commercial version and keeps the entire code base under a single copyright by requiring copyright transfer for contributions, which has been a sore spot in the eyes of many people. This may be part of the cause for syslog-ng failing to become the default system-logging daemon of modern Linux distributions. Now the project seeks to relieve these concerns and attract a wider contributor base with a new licensing model.
"Over ten years ago, the development of syslog-ng started out as a purely GPL project, but required copyright transfer for contributed patches. Similar to other projects, for example MySQL, this aimed to keep the codebase under a single copyright, leaving the possibility open for future relicensing and proprietary versions.
"For about eight years, syslog-ng was virtually a one-man show, maintained by its core developer Balázs Scheidler. This changed in 2006 when BalaBit — the company founded by Balázs originally for developing application-layer firewalls — decided to back the project and release a commercial version, syslog-ng Premium Edition. The model was to develop both versions in parallel and release additional features in the Premium Edition, which over time get released in the Open Source Edition as well."
