On Thu, 17 Sep 1998, Greg A. Woods wrote:

: > That has allowed various companies to build propriety solutions around
: > NetBSD.

Insert:  "without cost."

: ... however I fail to see how the DB 2.x copyright licensing
: restrictions would impede the derivation of proprietary products from
: NetBSD since it is no doubt trivial to obtain commercial licensing for
: DB 2.x that would forgo the need for a vendor to distribute source code
: to their proprietary solution.

If in libc, that's a very important step, as it's not simple to detach the
DB code from libc.  More importantly, it wouldn't be possible to remove it
from the system entirely, as several system utilities use db.

If in a separate library, it's just as feasible to use a pkg to compile
against

And, we _must_ keep DB 1.85 in the v12 libc anyway, because it is binary
compatibility (along with the stated point of several system utilieis
already using it...).

NetBSD's base code license allows _anyone_ to use the code for _any_
purpose, _free_of_charge_, as long as acknowledgment is given.  Integrating
DB2 into libc violates that, and making it part of the system such that a
vendor would have to eradicate it or otherwise pay royalties (that's
basically what the "pay for a license" is) is just bogus.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)