It is not the change of license in itself that makes people think it is a questionable move, it is the strategic nature of this decision.

When building a solution/product, you have to choose the components you use, and invest in it, in time and sometimes money, and its technical and legal specificities can have strong implications on your solution.

License change is a hazard than can happen, and it is also one the harder to foresee, and when it happens to a product to you depend on it can have a big impact.

And it is Berkeley DB, same house as BSD known for the ultra permissive license. I wouldn't have anticipated that, and I guess with many others.

Given the fact that you may not be able to move to another product, and that your business may depend on the license permissiveness, it can be assimilated with totally legal, but nonetheless, extortion.

I wish people acted like this when Sparrow essentially stopped being developed. But the collective came back with: "You got what you paid for" and "You can still use it" and "You shouldn't have expected free updates for life."

And when free services shut down, or start charging, they say "If you aren't paying for it, you are the product" or "You can't complain if you didn't pay for it."

So now the same thing happens for the BDB, and people are upset. But it's the same exact thing. Well, except the BDB's older versions are still available with full source available, and there has always been a paid license available. And the AGPL only applies if you are modifying the BDB source.

It's the two-faced nature of this current culture of developers. We'll consume open source products. Hell, we'll contribute back open source tools. Hell, we'll ship it under BSD because we are want to be permissive and "really free." But we won't do it with our real products.

> Given the fact that you may not be able to move to another product, and that your business may depend on the license permissiveness

As has been said time and time again: there is nothing forcing you to upgrade. Nothing forcing you to change. You are free to continue using exactly what have depended on.

BerkeleyDB was distributed with the "Sleepycat License" since 1996 which is similar to GPL in terms of permissiveness so it's not like BerkeleyDB has been distributed with a permissive license in the past. If the Sleepycat License suits your needs but for some reason AGPL doesn't, why don't you just take the last Sleepycat-licensed version and keep using that? It still does everything it did when it was released. People could even fork it and make improvements to it.

Your comment demonstrates the difference between legal obligations and social obligations. Oracle has forced their way into and destroyed multiple communities. They have that legal right, but we also have the right to dislike them for it.

> What is this sense of entitlement here on HN?

HN (as a general rule) doesn't support free (as in speech) software.

It's interesting to contrast Oracle with webapp providers who haved move from free to paid models. HN (as a general rule) supports the latter and responds to the complainers with "you shouldn't have expected anything from a product you weren't paying for".

I don't understand why is that contrast interesting. Most of those webapps were already proprietary, and some of the paid ones are also Free (as in speech), like NewsBlur. They're completely different situations.

The comparison is actually quite apt. In fact, Oracle is doing less harm than many apps that switch to a paid model, or get acquired and shut down. Consider that BDB is still licensed under the GPL. It's just the new releases are released under the AGPL. You can still use the GPL version.

When an app switches to a paid model, you aren't left with a choice. So even if you invested time and energy into integrating it into your system, you are sunk. You generally don't have a choice.

And if the app stops being produced (e.g. Sparrow), it can never be improved. At lease the BDB allows people to improve the GPL version if they want.

So really, the issue is only a problem if

* You were already modifying the BDB source * You need the latest version

Considering the people with the problem are already modifying source, it's not as if they can't fork BDB. Sure, the cost for using BDB has now gone up, but that can be compared to adopting the AGPL and the changes needed.

Oh, I realize the problems with proprietary software, you're preaching to the choir ;) But I still don't see the point in comparing the two situations.

The problem is that they're changing the license to something more restrictive and less open mid-stream. The clauses in the AGPL, ostensibly made to make things "more fair" result in a lot more needed bookkeeping and management of the resulting software. Utilizing a modified version means you have to provide source, and nearly every instance of bdb has modifications from the Oracle source to patch various behaviors, etc.

Furthermore, there are other, more open libraries that do what bdb does, yet don't have those restrictions. The breach of trust Oracle performed in adding more restrictions makes me not want to use this software in any circumstances, out of apprehension that they may provide more new "freedoms" in the future.

No one (as far as I see) is arguing what they're doing is illegal, they're just being dicks

How is giving it away as open source software a dick move?

Giving away isn't dickish. However, changing the terms to a license with more expensive terms of conditions is. Because of the requirement of providing source with "modified" versions, you have to now provide a source download with your software, even if you make the most subtle of changes. Furthermore, as most OS distributors patch their version, even using the provided version becomes legally suspect. All of this makes lawyers nervous, and more apt to just throw money at Oracle instead of having to do a ton of auditing at the risk of expensive court action.

I understand what your are saying yet I can't help but feel that you guys are being a bit unreasonable. You know what would be a dick move? If they killed the open source version and sued the current users of the open source license with some ridiculous patent claim. That would be a genuinely dickish move worthy of an evil empire such as Oracle. Yet they are doing exactly the opposite of that.