[elephant-devel] bdb licensing text from section 9.4

[Alex Mizrahi]

 q> This was rather disturbing (to me) so I read the license documentation
 q> from the oracle site and it is quite ambiguous about above stated
 q> point.

I don't think it is ambigous. License only restricts _redistribution_ (if 
you redistribute, you must also release source code), but it doesn't 
restrict use itself.
What exactly redistribution means is further explained in licensing Q&A:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/htdocs/licensing.html
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What does "redistribute" mean?

The term "redistribution" in the Open Source License means your application 
is distributed to one or more third parties. Giving an application to 
customers, even in alpha or beta releases, is redistribution. Giving 
contractors, affiliates, parent organizations or subsidiaries, business 
partners or support vendors a copy of the application is generally 
redistribution.

The following are not redistribution:
Building an application for use internal to your organization, deployed and 
managed on your company servers.
Off-site backups or other software archival procedures.

If you have questions about whether your use of Berkeley DB, Berkeley DB 
Java Edition or Berkeley DB XML constitutes redistribution, please contact 
us at berkeleydb-info_us at oracle.com.
-----

I think it is pretty clear -- if you do not give your application that is 
using BDB in source or binary form to third parties, you're ok.
That is, using it for web site should be ok.

But nobody can _guarantee_  that you're safe. :)

If we compare it to other licenses, I believe license Oracle uses for BDB is 
very similar to GPL, with GPL being more verbose and more restrictive.

And so we can compare BDB to GPL-licensed MySQL (and, by the way, MySQL is 
currently also owned by Oracle).
MySQL's interpretation of licensing issues were intentionally vague (like, 
"if you're a commercial company, why don't you just buy it and forget about 
this legalese mumbo-jumbo"), but de-facto a lot of web sites just use MySQL 
without any problems.

In general, there is consensus that GPL does not forbid using GPL'd 
libraries in closed-source applications which work on company's servers 
(like web sites) -- it is known as "application service provider loophole", 
and for this reason a different license which covers network use was 
created -- it is called AGPL.