[Pkg-db-devel] Bug#256332: clarification of doc licensing for db3/db4.2

dann frazier dannf at dannf.org
Thu Apr 6 16:06:44 UTC 2006


On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 05:37:11AM -0700, Mike Olson wrote:
> Sleepycat didn't, and Oracle doesn't, have any issue with the
> inclusion of the documentation with Debian, for any current or
> past release.  The Debian team raised an issue of compatibility.
> In addressing it, we agreed to use the identical license for
> software and documentation.
> 
> We didn't retroactively change licenses granted to earlier
> releases, because that was never raised as an issue.  For
> simplicity, I would recommend moving to the later release
> of Berkeley DB -- 4.3 has the same license for docs and code.
> 
> Again, you needn't be concerned about compatibility on the
> part of the developer here; I believe this is an internal
> issue for the Debian legal and licensing team, not one raised
> by us.

Thank you for your quick reply Mike.
The reason I am asking for clarification is that the current stable
and development releases of Debian still include both the db3 and
db4.2 packages.  However, it is not obvious which license is
applicable to the documentation in these older releases since they
include both the legal.html and license.html files.

If the non-commercial clause in the legal.html file applies to these
releases, Debian will likely need to generate updated packages that
remove this documentation.

-- 
dann frazier





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