[arch-dev-public] licensing issues with DB 6.0

[Lukas Jirkovsky]

On 9 August 2013 11:31, Pierre Schmitz <pierre at archlinux.de> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> we just finished the db 6.0 rebuild in staging. I was pointed* to an
> issue with it's license though. It seems Oracle switched the license to
> AGPL with version 6.0. I am not an expert, but afaik this makes it only
> compatible with GPL3 clients and also enforces the AGPL terms on those.
>
> Debian had a similar discussion
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2013/07/msg00000.html
>
> If you think this is indeed a problem, I suggest to drop the rebuild for
> now and keep db-5. We could introduce a db6 package if packages really
> need that and are license-compatible. We might also want to try to
> disable db-functionality if possible and switch to alternative
> implementations.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Pierre
>
> *) https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=65426
>
> --
> Pierre Schmitz, https://pierre-schmitz.com

I would avoid DB 6 unless some software requires it. In my opinion DB
6 can't get widely adopted because of it's license anyway.

Maybe someone will pick up db 5 and continue maintaining it. Something
similar happened with MySQL and OpenOffice.org already and the results
are pretty good. BTW, is it just me or the Oracle is really shitty
when it comes to OSS?

Lukas