On Wed, 2007-05-23 at 18:28, Robert L. Read wrote: > I agree with Ian. Previously, one definitely required a license for > any public-facing commercial website. > I have not researched any change that Oracle may or may not have made.
Reading the Oracle licensing page (http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/htdocs/licensing.html): 1) Whether the application is commercial or not is immaterial to whether you need to license. 2) The restriction is that if you "redistribute" an application you need a license, unless your application is distributed with source code (i.e. "open source") 3) They specifically state that you don't need a license if your application is not distributed to others. Legally, the clarification then needs to be around what constitutes "distribution". In the Q&A section of the licensing page they give 2 lame examples of what would not be considered "distribution", but unfortunately, I don't see any specific reference as to whether a public-facing website would be considered "distribution of the application". My (limited) legal knowledge would say that a public-facing website does not constitute distribution of the application. However, if you host the application on at a hosting company, this may be argued to be "distributed" to this party. Joubert PS: there is an e-mail address on this licensing page; perhaps someone wants to submit this question? > > > On Wed, 2007-05-23 at 16:06 -0400, Ian Eslick wrote: > > On May 23, 2007, at 3:45 PM, Chris Dean wrote: > > > > > > > >> Am I right that I can't use elephant+bdb in closed source commercial > > >> application without purchasing licence? > > > > > > IANAL, but my reading is that if you ship a closed source product you > > > need a license for Berkeley DB. If you have a service/web site (like > > > Google, Yahoo, etc) my reading is that you do not need a license for > > > Berkeley DB. > > > > I think that Sleepycat, now Oracle clarified that distinction and > > that any public-facing for-profit website needs a license. Robert > > may have more to say on this topic. > > > > Ian > > > > _______________________________________________ elephant-devel site list elephant-devel@common-lisp.net http://common-lisp.net/mailman/listinfo/elephant-devel
