[ On Fri, September 18, 1998 at 10:47:16 (-0400), Todd Vierling wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Sleepycat Software DB 2.x library licensing vs. NetBSD
>
> On Thu, 17 Sep 1998, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 
> : > That has allowed various companies to build propriety solutions around
> : > NetBSD.
> 
> Insert:  "without cost."

OK.  That makes the position of the NetBSD Foundation somewhat clearer.

However I think it's a totally bogus desire.  Anyone building a
commercial and/or proprietary system, and hoping to get the base OS
totally without cost is either greedy or raping NetBSD contributors, or
both.  I'm as much of a software evangalist as anyone else, but I really
don't think this makes any sense for a volunteer organization that seems
to otherwise have goals of creating "open source" software.

> If in libc, that's a very important step, as it's not simple to detach the
> DB code from libc.

Huh?  Maybe for an applications programmer, but aren't we all systems
programmers here?  ;-)

> More importantly, it wouldn't be possible to remove it
> from the system entirely, as several system utilities use db.

Well, no, of course not.

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

True enough.

> 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...).

Huh?  Nothing prevents forward motion here.  Ancient libc is ancient
libc.  It has no bearing on what the future will bring.  Besides DB 2.x
has a 1.x compatability interface for source level compatabilty, and
folks wanting to run ancient NetBSD binaries could either do it under
/emul, or possibly just keep the old libc.so around (if ld.so does this
right).  There's no need to forever maintain every bass-ackwards
compatability interface in the -current libc just for ABI compatability.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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