At 10:00 AM -0500 2000/5/2, Dan Nelson wrote:
> .. means that a user that wanted to use FreeBSD in a commercial
> application would not be able to simply sell his product; he would have
> to get a license from Sleepycat.
Ahh, okay. Now I think I understand the licensing issue.
Does anyone know if this has been brought up with the folks at
Sleepycat to see if we could get a modification/clarification of this
point, so that as long as FreeBSD satisfies the necessary
requirements that this point of the license doesn't then recurse upon
people who might be using FreeBSD and linking with our libc?
Besides, don't we use gcc as the system-standard compiler, and
doesn't this likewise infect everything compiled on FreeBSD with the
GPL?
As I vaguely recall, there was recently a loosening of the GPL to
include the LGPL for what appear to be precisely these sorts of
reasons.
> Since FreeBSD use Berkeley DB for passwd.db and other system databases,
> we would have to provide DB 3 for non-commercial users and DB 1.85 for
> commercial users. Neither DB 2 or 3 provide any features that FreeBSD
> needs (concurrent multi-user modification and transactions), so there's
> no great need to replace our current DB.
Ahh, okay so there are also valid technical reasons -- it's too
big to put into libc.
Sadly, I fear that the result is that many people will tend to
stick with db 1.85, or that this will be the only exposure to
Berkeley DB for many people, and this will give them an unnecessarily
negative impression of this library.
Thus is the power of defaults, and one of the potential pitfalls.
Thanks everybody!
--
These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy
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