Re: Berkeley DB 6.0 license change to AGPLv3

On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 11:44 AM, Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org> wrote:

Hi,

On Thu, Jul 04, 2013 at 06:39:30AM +0200, Ondřej Surý wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org> wrote:

> > People have pointed out upthread that Oracle does not appear to be the
> > sole copyright holder of BerkelyDB. So unless they had copyright
> > assignments or similar on file, maybe a viable route would be to contact
> > those additional copyright holders and suggest they complain to Oracle
> > in order to get their relicensing reversed.
> >
> > This should probably be done in coordination with the wider Free
> > Software community.
>
> >From my understanding, the other copyright holders' opinion doesn't
> really matter – even if they relicense just the parts they own the
> whole work will be distributed under stricter license (e.g. AGPLv3).
> But feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

That would only work if the Sleepycat license and the AGPLv3 are
compatible I guess, is that the case? Otherwise, I would assume the
result not to be distributable.

As far as I understand it – there are some parts in Berkeley DB source code which is just BSD licensed (and the copyright holders are those mentioned earlier)[1], then there are parts which were under SleepyCat license and presumably the copyright holder for those parts is Oracle – and those were relicensed to AGPLv3. (There are also mixed files[3].)

So, the AGPLv3 just needs to be compatible with 3-clause BSD license, which is the case.

1. f.e. src/clib/atoi.c

2. f.e. src/clib/bsearch.c

3. f.e. src/db/db.c

--
Ondřej Surý <ondrej@sury.org>

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