Re: How can we submit code patches that implement our (pending) patents?

Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> On 2018-07-26 09:51:54 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> There's been an awful lot of discussion in this thread that supposes that
>> we can change the Postgres license. Let me just point out very clearly
>> that no such thing is going to happen. There will be no changes, no
>> additions, no alternate licenses, period. To change the license, we'd
>> need the agreement of all current and past contributors, which is a
>> completely impractical thing even if there were fairly wide consensus
>> that a particular change is a good idea. Which there isn't.

> That's obviously not going to happen. But there is the less crazy
> alternative of dual licensing new contributions going forward, with a
> licence that's TPL compatible.

No, we can't do that. Past contributions were made with the expectation
that they'd be distributed under the existing license, full stop.
Relicensing other people's work without their permission is definitely
lawsuit bait. (Of course, most people might be fine with it, but it
only takes one.)

I think what you're suggesting is some legalese along the lines of
"parts of this are under license X and other parts are under license Y",
but nobody's going to want to deal with that. As David or someone
mentioned upthread, not having to have a discussion with your corporate
legal department is one of the big attractions of Postgres. Furthermore,
there would be an awfully strong argument to be made that the net effect
of such a thing would be that the whole of Postgres is effectively now
under the double license --- because who could make use of only the
old-license part, especially after a few years of mixing? So anyone who
wasn't happy about their work being relicensed would still have solid
grounds to sue.

It's barely possible that we could get current and new contributors to
sign some kind of CLA containing anti-patent terms, but I don't think
there's any hope of amending the distribution license.

regards, tom lane