| Former type | Private company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Genre | Database software |
| Fate | Acquired |
| Successor | Oracle Corporation |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Founder(s) | Margo Seltzer and Keith Bostic |
| Defunct | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Lincoln, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Key people | Michael Olson (CEO) |
| Products | Berkeley DB |
Sleepycat Software, Inc. was the company primarily responsible for maintaining the Berkeley DB packages from 1996 to 2006.
Berkeley DB is a widely used and freely-licensed database software originally developed at the University of California, Berkeley for 4.4BSD Unix, and developers from that project founded Sleepycat in 1996 to provide commercial support after a request by Netscape to provide new features in the database software.[1] In February 2006, Sleepycat was acquired by Oracle Corporation, which has continued developing Berkeley DB.[2]
The company was founded in 1996 to develop, support and distribute Berkeley DB. The founders were wife and husband team Margo Seltzer and Keith Bostic, who are also original authors of Berkeley DB. Another original author, Michael Olson, was the President and CEO of Sleepycat. They were all at University of California, Berkeley, where they developed the software that grew to become Berkeley DB. Sleepycat was originally based in Carlisle, Massachusetts[3] and moved to Lincoln, Massachusetts.[4]
Sleepycat distributed Berkeley DB under a proprietary software license, that included standard commercial features, and simultaneously under the newly-created Sleepycat License, which allows Open Source use and distribution of Berkeley DB with a copyleft redistribution condition similar to the GNU General Public License.[1]
Sleepycat had offices in California, Massachusetts and the United Kingdom, was profitable during its entire existence,[5] and had numerous major customers, both Open Source[6] and commercial.[7]