Sleepycat License

Also known as Berkeley Database License, Sleepycat, Sleepycat License.

Commercial use: allowed
Share alike: not required
Attribution: required (keep the copyright and license notices)

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Write this as a license text (needs an account) DALICC reads the model above and writes what it permits, requires and prohibits in plain English. Without an account, the Text download above writes the model out from the vocabulary.

Canonical URI https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Sleepycat

Permissions

Charge distribution fee from the text
Commercial use from the text
Derivative works from the text
Derive from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
- Source code from the text
Display from the text
Distribute from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
- Source code from the text
Modified works from the text
Modify from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
- Source code from the text
Present from the text
Reproduce from the text

Prohibitions

Change license from the text
Promote from the text

License-wide duties

This license states no duties that apply to the work as a whole.

What applies by default

The statements above are the library's reading of this license: each is marked with the sentence it rests on, or as a library convention where the text is not explicit. The statements below are the ones the DALICC reasoner supplies for acts the license says nothing about, from the default rules of the dependency graph it reasons with. Each one names the legal source it rests on. None of it is in the record.

No default rule of that graph reaches this license: it speaks about every act the rules are about.

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY SLEEPYCAT SOFTWARE ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED.

Limitation of liability

IN NO EVENT SHALL SLEEPYCAT SOFTWARE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Additional clauses

- Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for the DB software and any accompanying software that uses the DB software. The source code must either be included in the distribution or be available for no more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and must be freely redistributable under reasonable conditions. For an executable file, complete source code means the source code for all modules it contains. It does not include source code for modules or files that typically accompany the major components of the operating system on which the executable file runs.

Info

Target asset types: Software
Region / jurisdiction: Worldwide
Validity: Perpetual
Source: https://spdx.org/licenses/Sleepycat.html
Legal code: https://opensource.org/license/Sleepycat
This description is published under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
SPDX identifier: Sleepycat on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier: Sleepycat

This record is published under CC BY 4.0. Credit it as: DALICC License Library, DALICC - Verein zur Förderung der Rechtssicherheit in der Datenbewirtschaftung, https://dalicc.net, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The license it describes belongs to its publisher.

Use this license

Everything below is generated from this record. Replace the example address with the address of your own work.

JSON sidecar

{
  "license-uri": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Sleepycat",
  "license-title": "Sleepycat License",
  "spdx-id": "Sleepycat",
  "attribution": "Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holder]",
  "asset": null,
  "generated-by": "DALICC"
}

RDF, Turtle

@prefix cc: <http://creativecommons.org/ns#> .

<https://example.org/my-work>
    cc:license <https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Sleepycat> .

RDF, JSON-LD

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Sleepycat"
  }
}

HTML attribution

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Sleepycat" rel="license">Sleepycat License</a>.</p>

This license asks for attribution, so the credit line is part of it.

Badge

Markdown

[![License: Sleepycat License](https://dalicc.net/license-library/Sleepycat/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/Sleepycat)

HTML

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/Sleepycat"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/Sleepycat/badge.svg" alt="License: Sleepycat License"></a>

Review

Written from the license text by: Giray Havur
Written on: 2026-09-15
Second review: not yet done
Record changed since this review: yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
Findings: 9 recorded, 5 applied to the record, 0 proposed

The record models the Sleepycat License, the Berkeley DB license. It is BSD-3-Clause with a fourth condition that makes it reciprocal in substance: any redistribution, in any form, must be accompanied by information on how to obtain the complete source code of the DB software and of any software that uses it. That condition is modelled as a cc:SourceCode duty on distribute, modify and derive and quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses.

9 findings

major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met". The permissive core, as on BSD-3-Clause.
major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

The third condition reads: "Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for the DB software and any accompanying software that uses the DB software." cc:SourceCode is therefore a duty on distribute, modify and derive, alongside cc:Attribution and cc:Notice from the first two conditions.
major Rubric 5 odrl:duty none

No cc:ShareAlike duty is written, although this license is often called copyleft. The condition requires the source of the work and of software that uses it to be obtainable and freely redistributable under reasonable conditions; it does not require the whole work to be licensed under these terms, which is what cc:ShareAlike says in this library. The reciprocity a reader should know about is in the quoted clause.
major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

The second and third blocks of the text carry the endorsement clause: "Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission." That is dalicc:promote as a prohibition. dalicc:ChangeLicense is prohibited because the text requires the license itself to travel with every copy, which is the reading IscLicense and BSD-3-Clause take of the same clause. The MIT record does not carry the prohibition although its text has the same requirement, so the library is not uniform here.
minor Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer applied

The text repeats three BSD blocks, one for Sleepycat Software, one for the Regents of the University of California and one for Harvard. The quoted warranty and liability clauses are the Sleepycat block, which is the operative one; the two backticks and two apostrophes around AS IS are the typography of the published text and are kept.
info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

The text names no legal system and no term, so cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual.
info Rubric 2 odrl:target applied

One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, following BSD-3-Clause. The text licenses a database library. dcmitype:Dataset is not written: the license covers the DB software, not the data a user puts in it.
info Rubric 9 record none

The consistency check with the axioms of dg_default returned no conflicts.
info Rubric 10 record none

Against BSD-3-Clause the difference is the source-code duty. Against the GNU records the difference is that there is no license-wide cc:ShareAlike duty, so a compatibility result will treat this license as permissive with a source obligation.

Report an issue The review record as JSON The review checks the model against the license text. It is not legal advice.

History

This license model has 2 versions. Version 2 is the one served today; every earlier version keeps its own address, so a conclusion drawn from one of them can still be checked against it.

Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur

The changes since version 1 recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on and named the license the record itself is published under.

View version 2 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML
5 changes
- changed permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode]
  
  was permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode]
  
  Manual edit Its duty cc:SourceCode quotes "- Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for the DB software and any accompanying software that uses the DB software."
- changed permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode]
  
  was permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode]
  
  Manual edit Its duty cc:SourceCode quotes "- Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for the DB software and any accompanying software that uses the DB software."
- changed permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode]
  
  was permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, cc:SourceCode]
  
  Manual edit Its duty cc:SourceCode quotes "- Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for the DB software and any accompanying software that uses the DB software."
- changed prohibition dalicc:promote
  
  was prohibition dalicc:promote
  
  Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "- Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission."
- added dct:license <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>
  
  Manual edit Every record is published under CC BY 4.0. cc:license names the record DALICC keeps of that licence; dct:license now names it by the address Creative Commons publishes it at, so that a consumer matching the canonical IRI finds it.
Version 1

Created from the license text on 2026-09-15 (Permissive: MIT, ISC and BSD-like).

View version 1 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML

Every change names the reason behind it: a finding of the content review, one of its library-wide decisions, the metadata that review wrote onto every record, or a hand edit. None of it is legal advice.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. What a license means is decided by its text; ask a legal advisor before you rely on it.