On Mon, May 15, 2000 at 10:36:44PM -0700, Rob Walker wrote:
>
> >>>>> On Mon, 15 May 2000 22:45:16 -0500, Christopher Browne
> >>>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>
> Christopher> On 15 May 2000 22:10:21 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
> Christopher> Rob Browning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>
> >> However, after poking around in the db docs (from now on, when I
> >> say db here, I mean the sleepycat db), I'm wondering if this might
> >> be much better candidate for that job than "rolling our own" fs
> >> subtree approach. For now, I'm putting aside the question of
> >> whether or not we might want to break out the current engine data
> >> as db tables. For now I'm just interested in considering if using
> >> db might be the best way to give us the "sectional data store".
>
> Christopher> Lots of "food for thought."
>
> okay, I will be the curmudgeon (sp?), here....
>
> "
>
> Berkeley DB is Open Source. It's free for use in other Open Source
> projects, like PostgreSQL. If a developer wants to use it in a
> proprietary application, then the developer needs to pay Sleepycat a
> licensing fee -- that's how we make our living. But Open Source
> projects don't have to pay us anything. You can download the full
> package from our Web site at www.sleepycat.com.
>
> "
>
>
> doesn't sound too GPL to me. Does this pose a problem with the
> GPL'ness of gnucash?
>
From the same website, section "Licensing":
"If you build an application that you do not redistribute outside of your
site, or if you build an application and your source code is freely
available and redistributable by others, you may use Berkeley DB at no
charge. You
must, of course, abide by the terms of the copyrights that apply to the
Berkeley DB software.
If you redistribute your application outside of your site and your
source code is not freely available and redistributable by others, then
you require a commercial license from Sleepycat Software."
In the actual license they go on to say basically that if you
_redistribute_ their source code, you must retain the copyright notice
and information on where to get it.
For the purposes of gnucash that should not pose any problem. In the FAQ
they even say about commercial products:
"21. Do I have to license Berkeley DB to create an application for a
single customer?
Not usually. The easy solution to this problem is to download
Berkeley DB onto the customer's machine when you create the application.
If you do that, you will not have redistributed Berkeley DB, and do not
require a commercial license.
You must make your customer aware of the restriction against
redistribution, of course, so that they do not redistribute Berkeley DB,
e.g., they may not install the application in thousands of sites around
the world."
That is, even someone offering commercial services for gnucash need not
pay a license fee to them.
Apart from all this, the whole db looks very good to me. I concur with
my predecessors in this thread: Let's think about using it. The
advantages of the Berkeley db are too great to ignore.
Just my 2 cents,
Jan
......... . .. .. . . ..... .. ..... .. .. ... ... .. . . ..... ......
Jan Schrage
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~schrage
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