[elephant-devel] QDBM Support

[Ian Eslick]

Technicalities aside, isn't the spirit of that license essentially:  
"if you make money off BDB, we should too".  So SVN is a product that  
is free, BDB is too.  I also thought that commercial web sites using  
BDB as a store were intended to be covered too - that seems to be the  
community concensus.

It's the definition of linking that is usually troublesome with Lisp  
and licensing.  If we look at it like Python as you intend below, then  
only the Lisp image itself need be open source (i.e. SBCL).  However  
Lisp is also compiled and dynamically linked with the image, which  
tends to make us look a little bit more like a dynamically linked  
program that GNU, in general, considers part of the application (i.e.  
contaminated)

Has anyone ever really ruled on this point in the Lisp community?   
This is in large part the reason for the LLGPL approach that Franz  
takes.  The GPL technically says that a GPL library contaminates the  
whole lisp image, including application code.  This is why I advocated  
the switch of the Elephant code license from GPL to LLPGL.

Actually, Franz might have some light to shed on this (they clearly  
had to pay for AllegroStore, but they might understand the licensing  
issues better).

Ian

On Feb 13, 2008, at 3:41 AM, Leslie P. Polzer wrote:

>
>> I recently purchased LispWorks for Windows. Downloaded Elephant and  
>> was able to make it
>> work with BDB. Thanks (and congrats!) for such a nice package. I  
>> have heard that QDBM is
>> much better than BDB in terms of performance and does not have the  
>> same licensing issues
>> (there are royalty payments for embeding BDB in an application).
>
> IANAL, but the licensing FAQ has a case that can be made be  
> analogous to Elephant:
>
> “Do I have to pay for a Berkeley DB license to use it in my Perl or  
> Python scripts?
>
> No, you may use the Berkeley DB open source license at no cost. The  
> Berkeley DB open
> source license requires that software that uses Berkeley DB be  
> freely redistributable.
> In the case of Perl or Python, that software is Perl or Python, and  
> not your scripts.
> Any scripts you write are your property, including scripts that make  
> use of Berkeley DB.
> None of the Perl, Python or Berkeley DB licenses place any  
> restrictions on what you may
> do with them.”[1]
>
> Also, when we talk about QDBM, I must ask: do you know of its  
> successor, Tokyo Cabinet[2]?
>
>  Leslie
>
>
> [1] http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/htdocs/licensing.html
> [2] http://tokyocabinet.sourceforge.net/
>
> -- 
> My personal blog: http://blog.viridian-project.de/
>
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