[elephant-devel] bdb licencing

[Robert L. Read]

Thanks for pointing this out.

Looking at the actual license, it seems clear to me that they have
adapted a "BSD-style" license, which
is quite a change from the sleepycat license (which very explicitly
mentioned a public-facing website.)

I will send a note to berkeleydb-info_us at oracle.com.

In the absence of other information, I think this would be interpreted
as NOT applying to a website;
as Joubert Nel points out, however, this issue has always revolved
around the definition of "redistribute".

I will forward the response here.



On Wed, 2007-05-23 at 19:10 -0400, Joubert Nel wrote:

> 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
> > > 
> > > 
> 
> 
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