On Mon, 15 May 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Several people have asked about the terms of the Berkeley DB license,
> > and the conditions under which users need to pay Sleepycat for
> > redistribution.
> >
> > To clarify, you're permitted to redistribute binary copies of your
> > application, including Berkeley DB, as long as source code is freely
> > available *somewhere*. Anyone could compile and sell PostgreSQL on
> > a CD without paying Sleepycat, because the source code remains
> > available on PostgreSQL.org.
> >
> > Lots of people ship binary copies of the OpenLDAP directory server,
> > which uses Berkeley DB. They don't pay us. Only the companies that
> > ship proprietary directory servers do.
> >
> > License fees are only required if you make a proprietary version of
> > the Open Source product. For example, if a vendor took PostgreSQL,
> > made changes to the backend, and didn't contribute those changes
> > back to PostgreSQL.org, then the vendor would have to pay Sleepycat
> > for the right to redistribute our software as a part of the package.
>
> Seems this changes our license more toward GPL. I don't think that is
> going to be supportable by the group. I doubt we are willing to modify
> our license in order to use the Sleepycat DB code.
I don't know ... I read this as totally anti-GPL ... "you are more then
welcome to distribute binary only, but then you have to pay us for use of
our libraries" ...
... the only aspect that would worry me is if SleepCat were to change
their license and make it more restrictive ...