Oracle Quietly Switches BerkeleyDB To AGPL 219
WebMink writes "A discussion in the Debian community reveals that last month Oracle quietly disclosed a change for the embedded BerkeleyDB database from the quirky Sleepycat License to the Affero General Public License (AGPL) in future versions. AGPL is only compatible with GPLv3 and treats web deployment as a trigger to license compliance, so developers using BerkeleyDB will need to check their code is still legally licensed. Even if they had made the switch in the interests of advancing software freedom it would be questionable to force so many developers into a new license compatibility crisis. But it seems likely their only motivation is to scare more people into buying proprietary licenses. Oracle are well within their rights, but developers are likely to treat this as a betrayal. As a poster in the Debian thread says, "Oracle move just sent the Berkeley DB to oblivion" because there are some great alternatives, like OpenLDAP's LMDB."
Re:Yawn, another fork (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait.. let me get this straight... (Score:4, Informative)
It already was GPL-compatible, so that part hasn't changed. They've gone from a more liberal license (the old license was compatible with, among other things, the GPL v2) to a less liberal one. That's always going to piss off some people. Just look at the controversy when a project goes from BSD or MIT to GPL.
Re:Yawn, another fork (Score:4, Informative)
The MongoDB core is AGPL. Its drivers are all Apache license, as explained here [mongodb.org], therefore not polluting your web application code and forcing it under the AGPL.
BerkeleyDB, on the other hand, is linked in directly, and would force anything using it to be under the AGPL.
Re:License drama (Score:4, Informative)
Has anyone ever been sued over an open source deployment done off license?
Um, yes, it happens all the time. The owners of BusyBox, for example, have not only sued, but won several cases [wikipedia.org], for example. And Oracle sued Google, in part because Google's Dalvik was under a less restrictive license than Java's GPL—and they only lost because Google was able to show that the parts they actually copied (the API) weren't subject to copyright. But that's a clear precedent for worry about what Oracle might do.
Re:Yawn, another fork (Score:5, Informative)
BerkeleyDB seems to be a niche product and according to TFA
It comes standard with Perl, Python and Java, among many other things. It may appear niche because it rarely gets much mention, but it's pretty much been the standard tool used for persistent associative arrays for a long time. Of course, it's also fairly generic, and eminently replaceable. I agree that this is unlikely to be a huge problem.
Re:lol (Score:5, Informative)
PHPB is precisely the sort of situation where AGPL is unacceptable, because it infects code that has no legitimate association with the software itself. For example, on a website that I run, I currently use a heavily customized PHPBB setup that hooks into the (non-open-source) login system used for the site that it is integrated into. None of those changes would be even slightly useful to anyone but me.
Further, without the ability to migrate the actual data, being able to replicate the service itself is basically useless, which means that putting something like PHPBB under a horrible license like AGPL would buy you absolutely nothing.
Basically, AGPL is only useful for a very, very narrow range of software designed specifically for use in "software-as-a-service" situations, and even then, it is only acceptable if you don't need to tie it into existing infrastructure. In short, it is basically never acceptable, and its only sensible use is for businesses to be able to say, "Hey, look, we've open sourced our stack," while simultaneously ensuring that no legitimate business would ever even contemplate replicating that stack and competing with them.
Re:Yawn, another fork (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yawn, another fork (Score:2, Informative)
Generally, is considered ethical being paid to provide people with bugfixes for code you are responsible for.
From the GPL [gnu.org]:
15. Disclaimer of Warranty.
THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY
APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY
OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM
IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF
ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
16. Limitation of Liability.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS
THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY
GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE
USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF
DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD
PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS),
EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGES.
It's NICE to have the product's owner providing you with bugfixes. But by no means it will be unethical if he/she/it stops doing that - when it's the case, go code your own fixes or pay someone to do that for you.