Re: Berkeley DB 6.0 license change to AGPLv3
Ondřej Surý wrote at 00:36 (EDT):
> (d) Is it ok to switch 106 source packages and their reverse depends
> to AGPLv3?
I think that might be stated a bit more clearly: you won't be changing
the license of the upstream works; you'd be changing the license of the
dowstream whole as it appears in Debian. If the combination is done
during building the software, the license on the source itself doesn't
necessarily change: it's just that the binary is covered by AGPLv3,
which means you have to comply with AGPLv3 with regard to the binary
and its complete, corresponding source (which now includes both BDB
and the upstream sources).
That said, this is indeed an important question to consider, even if I'd
state it differently than Ondřej does.
> 1) I think this should be made with consent of upstream authors
In the GPLv2-only and/or AGPLv3-incompatible package cases, you do
indeed need such consent. In the other cases, you probably don't.
I'd suspect, though, that Debian didn't *add* the BDB dependency to
those packages, but they already had it upstream anyway -- which means
those AGPLv3-incompatible upstream projects are reeling from this action
by Oracle too, and they'll likely independently switch to something
other than BDB anyway, which would solve the problem for Debian without
Debian needing to do any real work other than change some package
configurations.
> 2) We need to pick the Berkeley DB version compatible with all
> packages that use the library.
I think this is roughly the same issue as (1), unless you mean a
technical rather than a licensing issue.
--
-- bkuhn
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