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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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
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 mai…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
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.
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?