Sleepycat Software

Sleepycat Software, Inc.

Company type	Private
Industry	Software
Founded	1996
Founder	Margo Seltzer, Keith Bostic
Defunct	2006
Fate	Acquired by Oracle Corporation
Headquarters	Lincoln, Massachusetts , United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Michael Olson (President and CEO)
Products	Berkeley DB

Sleepycat Software, Inc. was the organization responsible for the development and maintenance of the Berkeley DB software packages from 1996 until 2006.

Company

Originally created at the University of California, Berkeley for 4.4BSD Unix, Berkeley DB is a freely licensed database software product. The team behind this project established Sleepycat in 1996 to offer commercial support, following a request from Netscape for additional features. In February 2006, Oracle Corporation acquired Sleepycat and continued advancing Berkeley DB.

The founders of the company were married couple Margo Seltzer and Keith Bostic, both principal developers of Berkeley DB, with Michael Olson acting as President and CEO. All three had studied at UC Berkeley, where they initially created the software. Sleepycat started its operations in Carlisle, Massachusetts, moving to Lincoln, Massachusetts in 2000.

Berkeley DB was offered by Sleepycat under a dual licensing model: a proprietary license that included commercial capabilities and the Sleepycat License, an open-source license featuring a copyleft provision akin to the GNU General Public License.

Throughout its lifespan, Sleepycat maintained offices in California, Massachusetts, and the United Kingdom, consistently sustaining profitability.

See also

• Berkeley Software Design
• Computer Systems Research Group

External links

• Oracle Berkeley DB — continuation of Sleepycat's official site