Hello Sebastian,
we tried to understand the license terms, but we are no lawyers. But the conclusion seems to be that we cannot ship anything. I just want to have an informal answer here that this assumption is correct and that the customers indeed need to modify the read-only install folder in Program Files after our software has been set up. I can give those clear instructions and will mention that they should contact IBM support for further questions.
Let me express that this is very uncomfortable for automatic software deployment in larger companies. No IT department will be happy to having to script out and maintain an additional step here. It would be good if your license terms allow the shipping of IBM.Data.Db2.dll together with 3rd party applications, so that the customer can install clidriver content in a separate folder and let the env variable point to it. Maybe you can raise that with your legal team. The managed dll by itself is useless and also does not contain any relevant IP I would assume. And thats how NuGet packages should work.
BR Florian
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Florian Leeber
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Original Message:
Sent: Fri June 21, 2024 05:45 AM
From: Sebastian Lucas
Subject: .NET Core data provider for DB2 - How to redistribute
For distributing IBM.Data.Db2 with .NET 8.0, I recommend checking IBM's licensing terms and documenting clear installation steps for customers. This should help ensure compliance and ease of use.
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Sebastian Lucas
Original Message:
Sent: Thu June 20, 2024 04:03 PM
From: Florian Leeber
Subject: .NET Core data provider for DB2 - How to redistribute
Hello guys,
we are upgrading an enterprise application to .NET 8.0 and are facing some interesting challenges:
- Before we would build our application against the .NET Framework driver, but not ship anything at all - customers were solely responsible for installing necessary parts
- Now since it seems that .NET Core does not have a GAC anymore, we would have some options:
a) Ship all the stuff from the Nuget package including the clidriver folder and install it into Program Files directory
b) Ship only IBM.Data.Db2.dll and tell customers to use the environment variable to point to their installation directory
c) Do not ship anything and tell customers to drop IBM.Data.Db2.dll and clidriver folder on top of our installation into Program Files
But all of those options seem to have issues: a) might violate a license. Option b) might violate a licenses as well plus customers need to do additional steps AND depend now on a properly configured env variable. Option c) forces the customer to do additional post-install steps in a read-only location with Admin rights.
So please, can someone explain to me whats the correct way here to make our lives and the lives of our customers as easy as possible? And please add that to the FAQ. I wonder why nobody, not even after extensive Google research - ever wrote anything about rules of distributing what you put on Nuget...
BR Florian
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Florian Leeber
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