On 28 Jun 2012, at 11:53am, Peter Volkis <petervol...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Occasionally I bump into some proprietary software that's using SQLite behind > the curtain and I wonder if they have bought a license. I know SQLite is > public domain and it is not required to buy a license while using it for > commercial purposes. I wonder about it just out of straight curiousity, but > software companies are very often not happy to answer this question and it > gets neglected. Certain companies even consider this question very offensive. > Is there a public list of all companies that have bought an SQLite license or > this information is considered private and is not openly disclosed? Being > able to see which companies "play nice" would help deciding if it's worth > using their software. License details are here: <http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html> tl;dr version: no license is required or even requested. You can buy one if some part of your organisation requires it for legal purposes. There's a list of well-known users here: <http://www.sqlite.org/famous.html> However, being truly public domain (not GPL, copyleft, or anything like that) means no license is needed, or asked for. Consequently it's found in countless products from companies which would never organise the business relationships necessary for obtaining and paying for a license. For instance, I recently found the standards SQLite headertext in the firmware update for a TV recorder, which is made by an obscure Korean company which would probably not pay a license fee. I don't think there's much a company could do to misuse SQLite. Claiming authorship or ownership over it would be illegal (in my country, at least) but apart from that I can't think of anything. Simon. _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@sqlite.org http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
