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<title>Blitz Licensing</title>
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<h1>Blitz Licensing</h1>

<h2>Introduction</h2>

The key factor in determining how Blitz's licensing (and that of Sleepycat's with respect to Db) affects you, is whether you plan to use it as is or with modifications.

<h3>Using Blitz Unmodified</h3>

<p>In all cases where you wish to use Blitz unmodified (compiled from source or using binaries), there are minimal licensing requirements.  You may do as you wish, including:
</p>
<ol>
<li>Incorporating Blitz into a commercial product.</li>
<li>Using Blitz for research.</li>
<li>Using Blitz in another open source project.</li>
</ol>

<p>The only stipulation is that you obey the requirements in Blitz's license file which, amongst other things, requires that you include a copy of the license in your software release (be it a commercial product or source code release for research purposes).</p>

<h3>Using Blitz in Modified Form</h3>

<p>In the case where you release your modifications publicly, in source code form, the licensing restrictions are identical to those for using Blitz unmodified.</p>

<p>If you make modifications to Blitz and wish to keep them proprietary, you become subject in full to the Sleepycat <a href="http://www.sleepycat.com/download/licensinginfo.shtml">licensing conditions</a>.  Under some very limited circumstances, Sleepycat permits usage of Blitz/Db without requiring a commercial license but in the majority of such cases, you will be required to pay for a commercial Db license.</p>

<a NAME="sleepycat"></a><h3>Appendix A - Sleepycat's position on Licensing</h3>

Explained in this email from the Sleepycat sales team:

<pre>
Dan, I think as long as the customer doesn't see BDB at all, but BDB only runs behind your BSD-licensed Blitz
application, that your users can use Blitz (and indirectly Berkeley DB) without buying a separate license from
Sleepycat. As long as they don't modify Blitz or call the Berkeley DB APIs directly, then this use should be all
right under Sleepycat's public license.

If they should make proprietary modifications to Blitz, or make direct calls to Berkeley DB APIs, then they'd need
to come to us for a commercial license, or make their own source code publicly available.
</pre>

<p><div align="center"><a href="../index.html">Back to Documentation</a></div></p>
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author	Dominic Cleal <dominic@computerkb.co.uk>
date	Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:02:11 +0000
parents	3dc0c5604566
children