[Tfug] Database licensing theory

[Matt Jacob]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Paul Steinbach <MIS at samlevitz.com> wrote:
> We are looking a possible database migration.  From a legal standpoint, what
> is the "source code" of a database?  We use an application that runs on an

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, so my opinion doesn't hold a whole lot
of legal weight. Having said that, to me "source code" means the
decompiled code that makes up the binaries for the RDBMS itself.
Unless you specifically reverse-engineered the binaries, you shouldn't
have access to that in the first place.

> license.  My gut reaction is that the table structure is not source code but
> that all the functions, procedures, triggers, constraints, etc are part of
> the source code and would be protected by the application license.  What are
> your thoughts?

If you put the data into the database, you own it. Keep in mind that
stored procedures and triggers are usually written in an
implementation-specific way, so if you're moving to a different
platform, I highly doubt you'd be able to do a straight export/import
and expect everything to come out OK on the other side.

Matt