Re: Berkeley DB 6.0 license change to AGPLv3
[Posted July 10, 2013 by n8willis]
| From: |
| Ben Hutchings <ben-AT-decadent.org.uk> |
| To: |
| Ondřej Surý <ondrej-AT-sury.org> |
| Subject: |
| Re: Berkeley DB 6.0 license change to AGPLv3 |
| Date: |
| Tue, 02 Jul 2013 14:48:18 +0100 |
| Message-ID: |
| <1372772898.5155.91.camel@deadeye.wl.decadent.org.uk> |
| Cc: |
| debian developers <debian-devel-AT-lists.debian.org>,
debian-legal-AT-lists.debian.org, Florian Weimer <fw-AT-deneb.enyo.de> |
| Archive‑link: | |
Article |
On Tue, 2013-07-02 at 09:44 +0200, Ondřej Surý wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Florian Weimer has correctly pointed out that Oracle has decided to
> change the BDB 6.0 license to AGPLv3
> (https://oss.oracle.com/pipermail/bdb/2013-June/000056.html). This
> hasn't been reflected in release tarball (probably by mistake), but
> since the AGPLv3 is not very friendly to downstream projects, we (as
> the Debian project) need to take a decision.
>
> My opinion is that this Oracle move just sent the Berkeley DB to
> oblivion, and Berkeley DB will be less and less used (or replaced by
> something else).
If the relicensing is real and not another misconfiguration of the
build/release system (like with MySQL docs), this sounds like a
shakedown for proprietary users of Berkeley DB. GPLv2-licensed users
are collateral damage.
> What we can do right now (more can apply):
[...]
> [ ] Keep db5.3 forever
Well, indefinitely. But I somewhat expect some BSD developers to try
maintaining a fork of it, as they're very unlikely to be happy with
AGPLv3.
> [ ] Suck it and relicense the downstream software as appropriate
[...]
GPLv3 is compatible with almost all common licences except GPLv2 (though
that might not be true with the additional conditions of AGPLv3). If
anyone has made a decision to use GPLv2-only then I wouldn't expect them
to relicense for this. Therefore a BSD-licensed libdb is still needed.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings
Life would be so much easier if we could look at the source code.
