Re: MySQL analysis

On Friday 25 January 2008 01:57, Decibel! wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 01:44:15PM -0500, Jan Wieck wrote:
> > On 1/20/2008 8:45 PM, Santiago Zarate wrote:
> > >Like: If anyone buys and the licence changes... i would start a
> > >fork... pick up the free code and start a new branch along with other
> > >developers.
> >
> > As has been said many times before, buying Postgres is virtually
> > impossible because the copyright isn't held by a single entity. So in
> > the Postgres case, this threat doesn't exist.
>
> Not only that, but even if someone did buy the copyright, it doesn't buy
> them anything because everything is currently under BSD. You could
> instantly fork the code and lose nothing.
>
> Even if someone came along and bought the rights to the name, it still
> doesn't buy much; we can just change the name.
>
> Oh wait, we've tried that... I guess if someone bought the name we
> really would be hosed! ;P

Hmm.. maybe this should be added to the FAQ... "In fact, PostgreSQL is so
impervious to corporate take-over, we even have 2 names (postgresql and
postgres) that they would have to buy rights too in order to force a name
change. And even then we have a backup name (postgre)!!"

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} Postgre