GeoIP database comparison

[Nick Mathewson]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 4:58 AM, Karsten Loesing
<karsten.loesing at gmx.net> wrote:
 [...]
> In summary, I think we should ship Maxmind's free database with Tor, if
> the license permits it. I'm hoping to get much better usage statistics
> results for smaller countries like Tunisia from the free Maxmind. Also,
> Maxmind has more users and is therefore less likely to provide a broken
> update and not noticing for weeks.

http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/LICENSE.txt

This license doesn't look too bad to me.  Their software (which we
wouldn't use, so it doesn't matter) is LGPL; the database appears to
be under a old-BSD-like license, with the notorious advertising
clause.  The advertising clause is annoying, but not a show-stopper,
since we aren't GPL.  (We're already stuck with an advertising clause
anyway, from OpenSSL's SSLeay license.)

One of the lawyers should double-check me here, though.

-- 
Nick