A Change in License for Berkeley DB

http://meshedinsights.com/2013/07/05/a-change-in-license-for-berkeley-db/

by kstaken • 13 years ago

79 77 13 years ago

DoubleMalt2• 13 years ago

While I don't have made up my mind completely about AGPL but lean to liking it, changing to it for an infrastructure library, is really a backstabbing move.

Nice to see a company so consistently living up to its reputation.

And one simply must appreciate the elegant irony of using a strong copyleft license as a dagger.

davidw3• 13 years ago

And one simply must appreciate the elegant irony of using a strong copyleft license as a dagger.

That's always been one of the ways to make money from free software. Mysql did the same thing, and I think Qt did as well at some point in its history. If I recall correctly, even RMS sort of approves of it.

Downvoters: go read some history, there's nothing factually incorrect in what I wrote above. The bozo proliferation seems to continue unabated here:-(

Here's RMS himself: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

DoubleMalt2• 13 years ago

The difference being that these projects had the restrictive licenses from early on. They did not change from permissive (and in the context of web service infrastructure GPL is actually a permissive license) to something more restrictive.

On the contrary Qt changed the license from GPL to LGPL what definitely helped the proliferation (and the survival after the Nokia disaster).

MySQL ... well moving this to AGPL would give MariaDB the final push it needs (if it still needs one). So they just let it rot.

Too bad there was no equivalent project for BerkeleyDB.

microtonal2• 13 years ago

changing to it for an infrastructure library, is really a backstabbing move.

Well, Berkeley DB was already a copyleft library[1] (basically a BSD/MIT-style license with an extra copyleft clause). So, unless you had a commercial DB license, you already had to provide the source code for applications that used it. This 'just' extends it to applications that are used over a network.

[1] From the Berkeley DB license:

3. Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for the DB software and any accompanying software that uses the DB software. The source code must either be included in the distribution or be available for no more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and must be freely redistributable under reasonable conditions. [...]

ricardobeat• 13 years ago

The old license only required providing source code if you redistributed it. The new license requires it even if you never distribute anything, e.g., you use it in the backend of a SaaS app.

beedogs• 13 years ago

What an absolutely horrible company Oracle is. They are without a doubt the biggest enemy to free and open source software, and I'll be glad when they're gone.

reeses• 13 years ago

I agree with much of this, but mainly on their sales and marketing tactics.

However, what does your rationale for finding them reprehensible have to do with the article? The Affero GPL/GPLv3 is arguably the most open source license available.

toyg3• 13 years ago

As TFA says, the problem is the anti-tivoization clause, which creates issues for web developers, issues which weren't there with the previous licenses and that should push more people to buy commercial licenses as insurance.

makomk• 13 years ago

The Affero GPL has a clause requiring the operators of network servers that use AGPL code to provide full source of the network server. Berkley DB is used in, amongst other places, Subversion - so when they next do a distro upgrade in a few months, a whole bunch of developers are going to find they're no longer license compliant and have no easy way of becoming license compliant.

toyg3• 13 years ago

Apologies, I thought that was exactly the anti-tivo provision of gpl3/agpl ? Not that I've looked too hard, it's really not my field.

ra• 13 years ago

It's a slight bummer but not really a big problem. If the community doesn't like the license it'll just fork and we'll end up with a similar situation to MySQL and MariaDB.

i.e. we're better off in the end. Open source lives because of it's contributors and can not be killed off by a corporation.

EDIT: Removed my 'opinion' because it's not important :-)

vampirechicken• 13 years ago

So the problem, if I understand it correctly, is that you want to create a commercial product out of free building blocks, and you're angry that the author of one of those building blocks in changing their license so that you can't use it any more and still sell your product?

chenster• 13 years ago

Wow, Oracle has did again. Oracle has proven again it is now the single most evil software company out there, surpassing Microsoft. What they are doing is to incrementally convert open source free software into their proprietary cash cow.

dvirsky2• 13 years ago

how does this affect Python users? Berkeley is part of the default standard library and is installed by all Python users everywhere.

stock_toaster• 13 years ago

Wasn't it removed in python3, and deprecated since 2.6?

Yver• 13 years ago

Oh that AGPL cash cow... Damn you Richard Stallman and your capitalistic ways!

smnrchrds3• 13 years ago

In Python 2.x there was a module for Berkley DB which is removed in Python 3 (bsddb module). I'm curious that since Berkley DB has always had a strong copyright license and it was not PSFL, how things worked legally. There is no mention in the docs[1] that if you use an import bsddb in your code you have to make it open-source. When they decided to remove it there was no mention of the license, just difficulty of maintenance[2].

So, was it possible to use Berkley DB without releasing your code as open-source before this change or was it because no one thought it was necessary to mention it in the docs?

[1] http://docs.python.org/2/library/bsddb.html [2] http://jessenoller.com/2008/09/04/stirred-up-dem-bees-should...

toyg3• 13 years ago

I thought bsddb was not actually shipped with CPython, and had to be manually built (which was a pain and would invariably fail, IIRC). I guess people were supposed to check source docs.

smnrchrds3• 13 years ago

No, not really. This is what happens in my normal Python installation in Windows:

    Python 2.7.5 (default, May 15 2013, 22:43:36) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win 32
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> from bsddb import db
    >>> print db.DB_VERSION_STRING
    Berkeley DB 4.7.25: (May 15, 2008)
    >>>

And this[1] works completely. Just replace bsddb3 with bsddb.

[1] http://code.activestate.com/recipes/189060-using-berkeley-db...

justincormack• 13 years ago

It was only possible if you bought a commercial license from Oracle. You do check licenses for everything you import don't you - you should!

smnrchrds3• 13 years ago

I check the license for everything I install. And I always thought the whole Python installation was under PSFL.

DrJokepu4• 13 years ago

I don't understand the sentiments in this thread. They own the thing. They do whatever they want with it. They have paid good money for it. Yet they have chosen to give it away as free software (with a license even Richard Stallman and the other FSF folks would approve). What is this sense of entitlement here on HN?

nknighthb• 13 years ago

Your comment demonstrates the difference between legal obligations and social obligations. Oracle has forced their way into and destroyed multiple communities. They have that legal right, but we also have the right to dislike them for it.

valisystem• 13 years ago

It is not the change of license in itself that makes people think it is a questionable move, it is the strategic nature of this decision.

When building a solution/product, you have to choose the components you use, and invest in it, in time and sometimes money, and its technical and legal specificities can have strong implications on your solution.

License change is a hazard than can happen, and it is also one the harder to foresee, and when it happens to a product to you depend on it can have a big impact.

And it is Berkeley DB, same house as BSD known for the ultra permissive license. I wouldn't have anticipated that, and I guess with many others.

Given the fact that you may not be able to move to another product, and that your business may depend on the license permissiveness, it can be assimilated with totally legal, but nonetheless, extortion.

DrJokepu4• 13 years ago

BerkeleyDB was distributed with the "Sleepycat License" since 1996 which is similar to GPL in terms of permissiveness so it's not like BerkeleyDB has been distributed with a permissive license in the past. If the Sleepycat License suits your needs but for some reason AGPL doesn't, why don't you just take the last Sleepycat-licensed version and keep using that? It still does everything it did when it was released. People could even fork it and make improvements to it.

jasonlotito3• 13 years ago

I wish people acted like this when Sparrow essentially stopped being developed. But the collective came back with: "You got what you paid for" and "You can still use it" and "You shouldn't have expected free updates for life."

And when free services shut down, or start charging, they say "If you aren't paying for it, you are the product" or "You can't complain if you didn't pay for it."

So now the same thing happens for the BDB, and people are upset. But it's the same exact thing. Well, except the BDB's older versions are still available with full source available, and there has always been a paid license available. And the AGPL only applies if you are modifying the BDB source.

It's the two-faced nature of this current culture of developers. We'll consume open source products. Hell, we'll contribute back open source tools. Hell, we'll ship it under BSD because we are want to be permissive and "really free." But we won't do it with our real products.

Given the fact that you may not be able to move to another product, and that your business may depend on the license permissiveness

As has been said time and time again: there is nothing forcing you to upgrade. Nothing forcing you to change. You are free to continue using exactly what have depended on.

frewsxcv• 13 years ago

No one (as far as I see) is arguing what they're doing is illegal, they're just being dicks

DrJokepu4• 13 years ago

How is giving it away as open source software a dick move?

tome4• 13 years ago

What is this sense of entitlement here on HN?

HN (as a general rule) doesn't support free (as in speech) software.

It's interesting to contrast Oracle with webapp providers who haved move from free to paid models. HN (as a general rule) supports the latter and responds to the complainers with "you shouldn't have expected anything from a product you weren't paying for".

icebraining3• 13 years ago

I don't understand why is that contrast interesting. Most of those webapps were already proprietary, and some of the paid ones are also Free (as in speech), like NewsBlur. They're completely different situations.

Sanddancer3• 13 years ago

The problem is that they're changing the license to something more restrictive and less open mid-stream. The clauses in the AGPL, ostensibly made to make things "more fair" result in a lot more needed bookkeeping and management of the resulting software. Utilizing a modified version means you have to provide source, and nearly every instance of bdb has modifications from the Oracle source to patch various behaviors, etc.

Furthermore, there are other, more open libraries that do what bdb does, yet don't have those restrictions. The breach of trust Oracle performed in adding more restrictions makes me not want to use this software in any circumstances, out of apprehension that they may provide more new "freedoms" in the future.

znowi• 13 years ago

Oracle is the Wall Street of IT industry. Toxic business practices and disregard to customer interest. Profit is the only imperative.

digismack• 13 years ago

If you change a software license, are users of that software bound to the new terms if they don't "update" to the version of the software released with the updated terms?

schrijver• 13 years ago

No, you can’t apply licenses retroactively—if you have a version with the old license it is still under that license.

vorg2• 13 years ago

But you can stop supporting the older versions, say, by only applying fixed bugs to the newer versions.

ExpiredLink2• 13 years ago

Why do people complain when Oracle changes the license to a Free license? Just kidding. Denounce Oracle but also denounce the "Free" software zealots who invented unfair licenses like AGPL.

icebraining3• 13 years ago

What makes the license "unfair"?

ExpiredLink2• 13 years ago

To be more precise: AGPL was invented by commercial software vendors to combine the aura of free and open software with a (largely unsuccessful) Shareware/Freemium business model.

DigitalSea• 13 years ago

Oracle angering people with questionable money-driven greedy decisions? Yep, sure sounds like the Oracle we've come to know over the years. While the licence in itself isn't bad, making such a big change like that and essentially forcing people to buy licences is a dog move.

anon13852• 13 years ago

Personally I think this is great news. Great news for free software, great news for users, great news for the AGPL. So very few web apps are open source, despite so many of the people who develop them claiming to support free/open source software. It seems that the only way to make the web open source is to force the hand of the developers, and that means we need to start pushing copyleft licences like the AGPL. The GPL was created for a different age. So much of the software people use now runs on a different machine; we can't continue to ignore this loophole.

BDB has had a commercial licence available for a long time, this move just closes a loophole that people were exploiting to use BDB in non-free software without contributing back.

Additionally, to the people saying 'oracle are only doing this to make money', this is one of the ways you are supposed to make money/fund the development of free software. RMS talks about it here: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed. -- RMS

pyre3• 13 years ago

  > So very few web apps are open source,
  > despite so many of the people who 
  > develop them claiming to support 
  > free/open source software.

So, if they use GPL'd software, and contribute back to it, but don't release their own software as GPL, then they are just a bunch of 'evil fat cats' that are leeching off of FOSS?

jasonlotito3• 13 years ago

Really? Do you have to start playing that game here? Can't you at least try to contribute in a meaningful way before you start acting like this?

Let me do the same to you.

'evil fat cats'

He didn't say "evil fat cats", so why do you feel the need to lie and say he did? Only a worthless troll would use those words, and words like "leeching" in place of discussing what he actually said.

So really? Is that what you want from HN? Couldn't you have spent a minute and phrased that without being so rude?

Regardless, that's not what he said, so your point doesn't make sense.

mark_l_watson• 13 years ago

+1 I agree. I have been dual licensing my little open source projects under GPL/Apache licenses just because I would like wider use, but I don't feel great about doing that. Licensing is a complicated issue and obviously software developers get to choose for themselves.

It is difficult to predict the future, but I would bet that in 50 years software development will flip to either an almost all commercial world, or an almost all AGPL (or other open source license) free and open hardware designs, etc. world. Considering economics, it is hard for me to see a path to a mostly AGPL-like world, but it might happen.

pron3• 13 years ago

I, too, like GPL and free software, but I'd like to stress that this change hardly closes any loopholes. The previous BDB license was simply too vague and open to competing interpretations. The AGPL does not require web software using BDB to distribute its source code, only software actually modifying BDB.

The gist of AGPL is this:

* If you redistribute BDB with your software, then you must provide your software's source code (even if you haven't modified BDB).

* If you use BDB on your web server, then you must provide the source for your software only if BDB is modified.

Since hardly anyone modifies BDB (I would assume), this affects almost no one. It simply makes the license clear.

jbellis• 13 years ago

Partly true. The FSF interprets "X linking Y" as "X modifying Y and therefore subject to Y's license," which is why Microsoft got to make so much hay out of the GPL's "virality."

__alexs2• 13 years ago

Those people who think this is some sort of enormously evil event that will kill BerkeleyDB because the AGPL is the evilest most restrictive free software license ever should probably read Section 13 here http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html

This pretty much only affects you if you are running some weird internal forked version that has upstream merged into it regularly. I don't get the impression that this is a common situation for BDB users.

(Although since Oracle did it it's probably inherently evil anyway of course.)

pron3• 13 years ago

You are absolutely right about the license, but I think you're confusing Oracle with Google. Oracle aren't evil, they just want your money. It's Google that wants to know everything about your life so that it can give you an IV line of ads. Google - evil, Oracle - just greedy :)

qwerta2• 13 years ago

My startup works on free alternative (apache licensed) db engine. When I saw title I was really woried they would change license to more liberal. That would affect our future sales seriously. But this is great new for us! :-)

seunosewa• 13 years ago

Why are you worried about the "future sales" of your free bob alternative?

qwerta2• 13 years ago

We sell non-free tools and services.

apendleton• 13 years ago

Fortunately for those not keen on the new licensing scheme, it seems like there are some other solid options on the market now for on-disk embedded key-value storage, under a variety of licenses: LevelDB, Kyoto Cabinet, and the new LSM library from sqlite4.

halayli• 13 years ago

I feel this post has shown that many don't understand what AGPL is or just assumed that because the article is about Oracle and licensing then it got to be evil, let's bash Oracle!

A Change in License for Berkeley DB

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