Different things are being confused here, I think.
The gist of BDB's license is that if you use BDB *as part of* a piece
of software, and that software is distributed under a commercial
(non-free, non-open-source) license, then you must pay for BDB. In
other words, the license terms that matter are those of the software
that is dependent on BDB -- the one making calls into BDB.
Since BDB is a database, it's common to use it as part of an
application that manages data. If you have built such an application
(call it MyApp), and some of the data MyApp manages are other
applications' source code, the license terms of those other
applications are irrelevant here. The only terms that matter to BDB
are those of MyApp.
-Karl
Robert Koberg <rob@koberg.com> writes:
> Our case is probably too unique and I may have over-genralized. We are
> an application service provider content management system. I would use
> subversion to manage paying clients file based config, content and
> templates. I would also use it to version our CMS app.
>
> What concerned me was that when I inquired at Sleepycat about XMLDB
> for a not-for-profit portal we manage for the client, that we were
> required to pay the licensing fees. This was because we developed it
> locally on our internal network, but the end product would be hosted
> on different servers that exists at a different postal address. From
> what I understood, if we developped at the same address where we
> deployed, then we would not have to pay the licensing.
>
> But really I was still confused. I presented different scenarios that
> I thought met the license requirements, but the gist I got was that
> the only way to use XMLDB was to have an open source app (or have all
> the contributors develop in vi on the remote server...). I don't mind
> paying (though Tamino was much more feature rich and was much more
> willing to reduce price for our non-profit client...).
>
> I had been hoping (obviously not following very closely) that the file
> system version of Subversion would not use BDB. Is it necessary? In
> other words are there plans to *not* use BDB? This is not a major
> issue for us as CVS is working fine for our needs -- just interested
> in using the better technology.
>
> I get the impression, from what I read, that to download and use BDB
> for subversion on our remote servers would not require licensing fees,
> but I was wrong about XMLDB and it took a good deal of time to clear
> it up.
>
> best,
> -Rob
>
> >The only case where you might have to pay a license fee to Sleepycat would
> >be if you were going to take Subversion and use it to build a new closed
> >souce product based on Subversion.
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >On Wed, 2004-07-14 at 16:51, Robert Koberg wrote:
> >
> >
> >>If you have a closed source project and need to download a newer version
> >>of BDB to your server, do you need to pay Berkeley Systems licensing
> >>
> >fees?
> >
> >Yes, that's my understanding. If you create a closed-source product and
> >sell it, and it depends on BDB, then you must pay licensing fees to
> >Sleepycat. For example, Collabnet's own product must do this. If your
> >project is open-source, then there are no fees.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
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Received on Fri Jul 16 19:03:55 2004