Re: License for PostgreSQL for commercial purpose

On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 02:10, Peter Galbavy wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > Neither of those readings is correct. The correct interpretation is
> > that the copyright holders (us and UCB, in the case of Postgres)
> > aren't charging any fee. This does not prohibit others from charging
> > for their own efforts.
>
> As I said in my original reply, intention has little bearing to (legal)
> reality. The legal advice received by some, including the OpenBSD project -
> so I understand, is that the wording is not clear enough and is open to
> interpretation.

If I didn't say it then, I will say it now; IMHO the legal advice they
received was faulty. Given that the copyright owners have gone on record
many times explaining what their intentions are, if they were to try to
take legal action against someone, that party could easily produce
enough evidence to show they were at no fault in using the code as the
copyright holders intended it to be used.

>
> > To read it as prohibiting fees for redistribution would mean that, for
> > example, no Linux distribution could include BSD-licensed software
> > (at least not on CD sets that they charge money for). I don't know of
> > anyone who thinks that is appropriate or intended.
>
> See http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html for some of that project's view. This
> specific issue if not discusses, but note that sadly PostgreSQL is not
> distributed on the CD-ROm for this exact very reason. i.e.
> http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/ports/databases/postgresql/Makefile?rev=1.65&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
>

Yep. IMHO this is more do to a political agenda they are trying to push
than any true basis in legal fact, as again, they could easily contact
this project for a letter of clarification if their goal was to protect
themselves legally.

Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL