(Illustration by Gaich Muramatsu)
> On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Brian Bartholomew wrote: >>> GNU dbm (gdbm) format. >> >> Recommendation: dump gdbm in favor of the follow-on work to Berkeley >> dbm, available from http://www.sleepycat.com. This code has lots of >> good properties, including speed, transactions, multi-user locking, >> on-line hot backups, and a port to Windows. *I have never encountered >> a bug in db2 while using it correctly*. > > By `db2', I assume you mean Berkeley DB version 2.0, not the well-known > relational database DB2 from IBM, right? Yes, it's a problem. It's one of those casual decisions that we never even thought about at the time, and which turned out to be spectacularly bad a few years down the line. We try and use "Berkeley DB" consistently, although that name has its own problems. >> The license says you can use it commercially >> if you distribute the source for your application. > > The license at http://www.sleepycat.com/license.net requires a little > bit more; it requires not only that you distribute the source, but also > that you make the source freely redistributable. This is correct. In practice, we have let people restrict further redistribution of their source code as long as the code was itself freely available for no-more-than-nominal cost, which is sometimes helpful, e.g., authors may not want test releases to acquire a life of their own. > The page that points to the license > (http://www.sleepycat.com/db.download.html) appears to contradict this, > saying it can only be freely used under non-commercial conditions. Perhaps > the sleepycat people could clarify their intent here. We put "non-commercial" on the initial web page as it covers our general intent. The specific details can be found on at the web page you noted: http://www.sleepycat.com/license.net We have been flexible on the license in the past, and will to continue to be. Our intent is that people freely redistributing their work be permitted to freely redistribute our work. People wanting to sell our software are required to obtain a commercial license. If this is an unfair policy for any particular distribution, we are happy to come to an arrangement or create a special license for that distribution. For example, there are various software packages where the authors *want* vendors to have permission to sell their work, e.g., Samba and other GNU-licensed software. We're happy to permit these authors to include Berkeley DB in their packages, under whatever terms they choose, with the only restriction being that vendors cannot extract DB from the package and use it separately. Keith Bostic =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Keith Bostic Sleepycat Software Inc. db_at_sleepycat.com 394 E. Riding Dr. +1-978-287-4781 Carlisle, MA 01741 http://www.sleepycat.comReceived on 1998-02-16 12:31:22