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A Change in License for Berkeley DB

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Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#51

Post by jasonlotito »

valisystem wrote: post #22
DrJokepu wrote: post #14

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?

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 ha…

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.

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#52

Post by jasonlotito »

pyre wrote: post #50
anon1385 wrote: post #41

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…

> 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?

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.

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#53

Post by jasonlotito »

icebraining wrote: post #42
tome wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

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.

The comparison is actually quite apt. In fact, Oracle is doing less harm than many apps that switch to a paid model, or get acquired and shut down. Consider that BDB is still licensed under the GPL. It's just the new releases are released under the AGPL. You can still use the GPL version.

When an app switches to a paid model, you aren't left with a choice. So even if you invested time and energy into integrating it into your system, you are sunk. You generally don't have a choice.

And if the app stops being produced (e.g. Sparrow), it can never be improved. At lease the BDB allows people to improve the GPL version if they want.

So really, the issue is only a problem if

* You were already modifying the BDB source * You need the latest version

Considering the people with the problem are already modifying source, it's not as if they can't fork BDB. Sure, the cost for using BDB has now gone up, but that can be compared to adopting the AGPL and the changes needed.

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#54

Post by smnrchrds »

toyg wrote: post #27
smnrchrds wrote: post #13

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…

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.

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...

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#55

Post by smnrchrds »

justincormack wrote: post #31
smnrchrds wrote: post #13

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…

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!

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

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#56

Post by Sanddancer »

DrJokepu wrote: post #14

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?

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.

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#57

Post by mark_l_watson »

anon1385 wrote: post #41

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…

+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.

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#58

Post by pyre »

jasonlotito wrote: post #52
pyre wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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 wa…

  > Let me do the same to you.

I see that you seem to be attempting to argue from a Moral High Ground. Would you like me to:

1) Remove your Ad Hominem attack?

2) Remove your rude remarks/tone that conflict with your desire for others to be less rude?

I'll agree that the 'evil fat cats' remark was probably a bit too far, and I apologize for that. Let me rephrase my comment:

  I take issue with the view that someone that doesn't
  commit 100% to an ideology (e.g. Free Software)
  doesn't care about said movement. The original post
  was (in so many words) trying to claim that all of the
  web companies using FOSS software and claiming to 'love
  Open Source' are being two-faced because none of their
  own software is release under a GPL license. This Us-vs-Them
  mentality isn't magically helpful when used in a FOSS
  context instead of in a, "you're either with us, or
  with the terrorists," context.

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#59

Post by Sanddancer »

DrJokepu wrote: post #34
frewsxcv wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Giving away isn't dickish. However, changing the terms to a license with more expensive terms of conditions is. Because of the requirement of providing source with "modified" versions, you have to now provide a source download with your software, even if you make the most subtle of changes. Furthermore, as most OS distributors patch their version, even using the provided version becomes legally suspect. All of this makes lawyers nervous, and more apt to just throw money at Oracle instead of having to do a ton of auditing at the risk of expensive court action.

Re: A Change in License for Berkeley DB

#60

Post by pron »

anon1385 wrote: post #41

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…

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.

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