Hello, I would like to package Intersystems Caché, a proprietary database by Intersystems and upload it to non-free.
I am confident I will get a written redistribution permission for Debian (for non-free). I am already working with them on this. In this regard, it should be no different from other packages in non-free. I would be using the SuSe 10 binary tarball as the starting point. I have been running and deployed several Caché versions (5.0, 5.1, 2007.1, 2007.2, 2008.1 and 2008.2) on several versions of Debian and Ubuntu for years and I have had no problems at all. The main (legal) problem is accessing that binary tarball. Intersystems distributes a single-user version of Caché in their website for free ( http://www.intersystems.com/cache/ ) but I have been told by Intersystems support this version would be useless. The reason is when you license Caché, you will receive a cache.key file you need to copy to a predefined folder in order for commercial features to be enabled. The freely downloadable version ignores this key file, so there is no point in packaging a demo version. Given that the freely downloadable tarball will NOT accept commercial license keys, I need to package a commercial version of the tarball. I have been told this should not be a problem for Intersystems (I waiting for a definitive answer on this, though), because without a license key the commercial tarball behaves like the free version: single-user. Accessing the commercial tarball would not be a problem either, because the company I work for licenses and resells Caché, so we already have access to the commercial tarballs. Questions - Is this kind of software, with such a limited access to the binary tarball, allowed to be in non-free? - In case the answer to the former question is negative because of the limited access relaying on me being available: if I would get (from Intersystems) a username and password with access only to the commercial tarballs, just for packaging purposes, and NO public disclosure of username and password (i. e. only to one or two more people, think something like the "Intersystems Caché packaging team"), would it be acceptable? Thank you. PS: In case you are wondering why want to package such a restrictive software, the answer is very simple: 1) Caché has a complex installation, 2) We are deploying it to a lot of remote clients and packaging it makes deployment and upgrades much much easier. I'm going to package Caché no matter if it's going to non-free or not. -- Pau Garcia i Quiles http://www.elpauer.org (Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
