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From: Niclas Hedhman <niclas@hedhman.org>
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To: "Apache Directory Developers List" <dev@directory.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [bdbje] [Licensing] Open Source verses Commercial Use
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:59:47 +0800
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On Tuesday 26 July 2005 07:56, Michael A. Olson wrote:
> Let me begin by pointing out what may be obvious -- there's no issue  
> of compatibility between the Apache License 2.0 and the Sleepycat  
> Public License. The Sleepycat license was designed to be identical in  
> effect with the GPL.

Ok. And Apache projects can not use GPLed products for the same reasons. (And 
according to FSF GPLed projects can't use Apache licensed products, due to 
some patent grant issues...)

> To be clear, Sleepycat believes in open source software. We support  
> it with real cash, for developer salaries, and with our time and  
> effort, in supporting open source projects that use Berkeley DB. We  
> don't, however, write software for free, for other people to sell.

Great. I don't think anyone here is questioning the honorable intents of 
Sleepycat. This is purely a principle of Open/Free idealogies, of which one 
or the other is not "more right", just different and not legally compatible.

> Our experience in the open source DS world has been that people really 
> don't make proprietary mods to the open source products.

That may be true for the majority of users, up until the point where the 
project is no longer maintained. However, ASF believes it is not up to us to 
decide what the downstream users want to do with the software.

> If the requirement really is that every component in an Apache
> licensed project be Apache licensed, then there's not much we can do.

Understood. 

AFAICT, Apache DS needs to lift the Sleepycat usage out of the Apache 
Directory Server, and re-surface the Berkley DB backend externally.
The immediate problem is to put in a suitable replacement.


Cheers
Niclas

P.S. Mental Note to Incubation members; This slipped through Incubation, so I 
think we need to tighten the checks over there. Each project listing all 
external dependencies and which license they are all in, in a table, perhaps.