[elephant-devel] bdb licencing

[Joubert Nel]

On Wed, 2007-05-23 at 18:28, Robert L. Read wrote:
> I agree with Ian.  Previously, one definitely required a license for
> any public-facing commercial website.
> I have not researched any change that Oracle may or may not have made.

Reading the Oracle licensing page
(http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/htdocs/licensing.html):

1) Whether the application is commercial or not is immaterial to whether
you need to license.
2) The restriction is that if you "redistribute" an application you need
a license, unless your application is distributed with source code (i.e.
"open source")
3) They specifically state that you don't need a license if your
application is not distributed to others.

Legally, the clarification then needs to be around what constitutes
"distribution". In the Q&A section of the licensing page they give 2
lame examples of what would not be considered "distribution", but
unfortunately, I don't see any specific reference as to whether a
public-facing website would be considered "distribution of the
application".

My (limited) legal knowledge would say that a public-facing website does
not constitute distribution of the application. However, if you host the
application on at a hosting company, this may be argued to be
"distributed" to this party.

Joubert

PS: there is an e-mail address on this licensing page; perhaps someone
wants to submit this question?

> 
> 
> On Wed, 2007-05-23 at 16:06 -0400, Ian Eslick wrote: 
> > On May 23, 2007, at 3:45 PM, Chris Dean wrote:
> > 
> > >
> > >> Am I right that I can't use elephant+bdb in closed source commercial
> > >> application without purchasing licence?
> > >
> > > IANAL, but my reading is that if you ship a closed source product you
> > > need a license for Berkeley DB.  If you have a service/web site (like
> > > Google, Yahoo, etc) my reading is that you do not need a license for
> > > Berkeley DB.
> > 
> > I think that Sleepycat, now Oracle clarified that distinction and  
> > that any public-facing for-profit website needs a license.  Robert  
> > may have more to say on this topic.
> > 
> > Ian
> > 
> >