Re: GNU readline and BSD license

* Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> [001223 06:59] wrote:
> Rasmus Lerdorf, the big PHP developer, told me that the existance of GNU
> readline hooks in our source tree could cause RMS/GNU to force us to a
> GNU license.
>
> Obviously, we could remove readline hooks and ship a BSD line editing
> library, but does this make any sense to you? It doesn't make sense to
> me, but he was quite certain.
>
> Our ODBC library is also GNU licensed, but I am told this is not a
> problem because it doesn't link into the backend. However, neither does
> readline. However, readline does link into psql.

FreeBSD has a freely available library called 'libedit' that could
be shipped with postgresql, it's under the BSD license.

If you have access to a FreeBSD box see the editline(3) manpage,
or go to:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=editline&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+4.2-RELEASE&format=html

--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright(at)wintelcom(dot)net|alfred(at)freebsd(dot)org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."