Effort to remove libdb

[Filip Janus]

Hi all,
as you maybe know the BerkeleyDB 6.x has a more restrictive license than
the previous versions (AGPLv3 vs. LGPLv2), and due to that many projects
cannot use it.
Few years ago there was an effort to reduce the number of dependent
packages on BerkeleyDB(libdb). And nowadays situation seems to be almost
the same. Here is
the link with packages dependent on libdb[1] from previous effort, which is
truthful for nowadays situation. As a member of the database team which is
responsible for libdb, I would like to know your opinions on this problem,
because many components have many specific cases where is libdb used.

Nowadays we would like to remove libdb from Fedora as soon as possible, in
the best case  from Fedora 33. But I am afraid, that it isn't real.

I have discussed this issue with my colleagues and we propose an approach.
We found that the biggest problem would occur in updating components from
versions that support libdb to versions without this support. Here could
arise problems of inconsistency.

Our approach assumes to convert old libdb databases to other supported
database format in each package related to this libdb issue. Result would
be Fedora without libdb.
I know that this approach probably isn't perfect.

Therefore  I would like to ask for Your opinions, suggestions and every
problem clarification.
Thank you very much for any help. I welcome every opinion.


[1]
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=User:Pkubat/Draft_-_Removing_...

Fiip Januš - Red Hat Associate Developer Engineer - Databases Team