Author: David Storrs <spammable(at)dstorrs(dot)com>
Page: 7.4/preface.html
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Muhammed (or anyone with the same concern) - I'm not on the Postgres dev team, so I can't really speak for them, but I think it's safe to say that you will never be charged fees to use Postgres. In order to charge you fees, the copyright holders would (in practice) need to change the license. Getting that many open source developers to agree on a license change would be very difficult and, even if it happened, they could only change the license for future releases, not ones that were already out there. So, let's say they release 8.0 under the current license and then release 8.1 under a license that says "you must give us your firstborn child and a million dollars if you want to use this". So long as you continue to use 8.0, you don't owe anything. And, because of the nature of the license on 8.0, you can hire developers to maintain it for you as a work-for-hire, without having to pay ongoing fees. (In all probability, a new open source no-fee project would spring up a!
nd you wouldn't have to pay for it anyway.)