Re: [open-cobol-list] libdb Licensing - READ

[David Essex]

Roger While wrote:

> Thanks for taking a time out from your own project.

Actually, I'm not currently an active developer in any open source project.

However this topic as been discussed on the TinyCOBOL mailing list on 
several occasions.


> At least here in Europe (with driver program "cobcrun"
> and compiling applications as modules ), there is NO
> licensing problems (So, I have been informed by a lawyer).

I think one can safely say that you would need a small army of lawyers, 
at least one per jurisdiction, to get a full legal opinion.


> I really do not want to be held up by legal constraints.

I agree.

The time would be better spent doing actual development.


> Therefore, we should both concentrate on an alternative.
> I will continue to contact sources. (Including I*M - C-ISAM).

Well, what your objective is in contacting proprietary sources ?


> I have CVS access to the VBISAM project (As you know)

Well, VBISAM looks promising.

However, I could not get the tests, enclosed with VBISAM, to work 
properly. So I could not confirm nor deny any of the author's claims.

Also, VBISAM is geared toward a UN*X style file-system. So some ports 
(FAT, NTFS ...) of the file-system parts would be required.

While it does have record level locks, it does not adequately deal with 
concurrency issues. So some form of a transaction processor (small, say 
30 users or less) would be required.