Re: Berkeley DB license

At 23:11 16/05/00 -0400, Mike Mascari wrote:
>
>But is he *allowed* to view the code? I realize its pseudo-Open
>Source, but to my understanding one cannot even look at GPL code
>without fear of "infecting" whatever project you may be working
>on. If Vadim looks a the code, decides "Nah, I can do this in two
>weeks time" and then the overwrite system appears in 7.2 aren't
>there issues there?
>

There used to be, but I'm not sure if the laws have changed.

I *think* the problem was differentiating reverse engineering from copying
- in the most extreme cases I have heard of companies paying someone to
document the thing to be reverse engineered, then hunting for someone who
has never seen the thing in question to actually do the work from the
documentation.

In this case, Vadim is not planning to reverse engineer SDB, but it *might*
be worth getting an opinion or, better, a waiver from Sleepycat...or
getting someone else to look into it, depending on how busy Vadim is.

P.S. Isn't it amazing (depressing) how a very generous offer to help from
people who want the same outcomes as we do, seems to turn rapidly into
discussions of litigation. This can not be a healthy legal system.

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