Re: Berkeley DB 6.0 license change to AGPLv3

[Ondřej Surý <ondrej@sury.org>]

On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 1:37 AM, brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 04:29:21PM +0200, Ondřej Surý wrote:
> Hi,
>
> would FOSS Exception similar to
> http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/foss-exception/ fix the
> relicensing problem?
>
> If so, I will propose Oracle developers to add the FOSS Exception to
> Berkeley DB licensing.
>
> The MySQL FOSS Exception doesn't include 4-clause BSD, so it still might
> bar some software to create derivative works with Berkeley DB, but the list
> would be considerably shorter. Or they will need to add the 4-clause BSD
> license to the exception list.

Notably, it's also missing the GPL version 2.  This isn't a problem for
MySQL, since it's already GPLv2, but there's probably quite a bit of
software that is GPLv2 that uses Berkeley DB.  Also, there is a wide
variety of BSD licenses that are incompatible, as you've pointed out.

Personally, I think the easiest and best solution is simply to stick
with Berkeley DB 5.3.  It avoids all the pain of relicensing and the
inevitable licensing bugs that *will* show up.  Not to mention that some
upstreams will be unamused at Oracle's shenanigans and won't want to
support BDB 6.

I disagree here. Berkeley DB is not a flawless software and we need an upstream support for bugs which creep up sometimes. Having the latest supported version would help here.

Also if we have an upstream that is willing to relicense Berkeley DB according to our needs, then we should work with them, not against them.

So the question remains - if I am to haggle with upstream, then what should I propose?

O.

--
Ondřej Surý <ondrej@sury.org>