[elephant-devel] CLSQL Store

[Ian Eslick]

Well, this is advice is just about worth the bandwidth used to  
download it...

Elephant and Lisp are widely available open source platforms, just  
like Python.  If you are running an application on top of that  
platform, such as a networked service, I'm fairly certain you are as  
in the clear with Lisp as with Python.  So this implies you can look  
at commercial models that use Python+BDB or Ruby+BDB and use that as a  
guiding precedent.

Think about the spirit of the business model the license is intended  
to support.  This is invaluable in guiding your interpretation.  If  
you are selling software that requires that someone else download the  
platform and use it, your financial success now depends on someone  
duplicating and running a parallel instance of BDB.  This strikes me  
as a value for which the developers of BDB should be compensated.  My  
guess is that the difference between ("buy my scripts" and download  
Elephant vs. "here is a shrink wrapped solution") is academic and  
these are identical in the eyes of any reasonable business model.

However it is difficult to make this model work in the case of web  
servers or persistent object systems.  How do you charge for a small  
number of instances of BDB running a large web service?  It isn't  
worth charging a 'per-instance' fee and it's very hard to value or  
charge for some 'volume of use'.  I've seen other embedded software  
vendors try to charge for value and it rarely works, so better to  
focus on the businesses where $ is tied to volume.

Cheers,
Ian

PS - A lawyer is the only person who can competently, and legally,  
give you an opinion as to whether your use does or does not fall under  
the license terms and thus whether you will or will not ever get sued.

On Jan 26, 2009, at 9:08 PM, <alain.picard at accenture.com> <alain.picard at accenture.com 
 > wrote:

>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ian Eslick [mailto:eslick at media.mit.edu]
>> Running BDB behind a website doesn't count as a
>> 'distribution' that requires disclosure of the website
>> source.  The cgi discussion is a sub-case of this.
>>
>> This wouldn't apply to selling website frameworks or desktop
>> software, of course.
>>
>> Of course if you are going to be making money it would be
>> worthwhile to get a legal opinion on this.
>>> I meant the next paragraph in the same document:
>>> ----
>>> Do I have to pay for a Berkeley DB license to use it in my Perl or
>>> Python scripts?
>>>
>>> I don't think that CL is anyhow worse than Python or Perl, and
>>> situation seems to be pretty much the same. For a Perl, BDB
>> connector
>>> is a standalone module, as I understand, for Python it is
>> included in
>>> standard  distribution. You can easily make
>>> SBCL+Elephant bundle,
>>> for example, and claim that it is this bundly which uses
>> BDB, and not
>>> your scripts -- it would be same logic as in Oracle's
>> statement above.
>>>
>>> Of course, it is a question what is qualified to be a "script" and
>>> what is "software" (and if it makes sense to take such
>> distinction at
>>> all).
>
> OK.  I'm interested to hear you guys think this way.
> So you think if I package the software as a SBCL+LLGPL
> utils/BDB+BerkeleyDB,
> I could redistribute that "core" as open source, and run
> my "script" (i.e. my website) "on top of" that.
>
> I think speaking to lawyers would still not really resolve the
> issue; the aim isn't simply to be prepared to win a lawsuit;
> the aim is to never get sued in the first place.  For that to
> happen, I'd be more interested in the actual intent of the license
> holder (i.e. Oracle), so they'd have to be contacted to bless
> this interpretation.
>
> Anyway, thanks for the response!  This is all highly relevant!
>
>  --alain
>
>
>
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