[Python-Dev] Incorporating bsddb3

[Martin v. Loewis]

Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> writes:

> Perhaps it could be made into an alternative for _bsddb to make that
> simpler (someone could even contribute code to let setup.py decide).

Sure.

> What's the license on the bsddb3 Python extension?

See below.

> What's the license on the BerkeleyDB code from Sleepycat?  

There are two licenses: One that they call the "open source license",
see

http://www.sleepycat.com/license.net

There is also a commercial license.

> Can we legally distribute RPMs or other binaries containing it?  (I
> thought there were some restrictions that make it not open source.)

It depends. This is the condition:

# Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on
# how to obtain complete source code for the DB software and any
# accompanying software that uses the DB software.  The source code
# must either be included in the distribution or be available for no
# more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and must be
# freely redistributable under reasonable conditions.

So distributing Python itself should be no problem.

It appears that the Pythonlabs distribution still uses DB 1.85. Don't
tell that Skip :-) He believes that this version has serious flaws
that can lead to data corruption...

Regards,
Martin