a data licensing problem

[Brian DeSpain]

Russell Nelson wrote:

>Lawrence E. Rosen writes:
> > The Sleepycat license is vendor and product specific.  It refers to "DB
> > software" (whatever that is) and includes the following warranty: "THIS
> > SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY SLEEPYCAT SOFTWARE ``AS IS'' AND...."  The
> > Sleepycat licenses is not reusable as is by other vendors.
>
I  didn't suggest simply copying and pasting it. Simply put the sleepy 
cat license does allow the licensing behavior required.  I doubt very 
much that the said company is using the IP of Harvard and Berkley. Those 
sections could be safely snipped. You actually cannot simply cut and 
past verbatim for various licenses. The real protection lies as Lawrence 
pointed out in the copyright inherent in the data. This company might be 
seeking to allow commercial development of their IP while at the same 
time allowing open source use of the data. Generally and this only 
applies to software it's not uncommon to license differently to closed 
source applications (presumably they are not going to release source 
back to the community or the copyright holder). Does the Academic Free 
license achieve this goal?


>
>Yeah, and you wouldn't want to, either.  You'd want to use the
>Academic Free License.
>
> > I notice that the Sleepycat license as published on the OSI website
> > includes a copy of two other licenses, one probably the BSD license and
> > the other a Harvard license.  That's probably in error.  I'm copying
> > OSI's webmaster, because that probably needs to be corrected.
>
>No, actually, that *is* the Sleepycat license.  All three parts.  You
>have to comply with all the terms listed therein.
>
>  
>



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