Re: contrib/fuzzystrmatch/dmetaphone.c license

* Jim Nasby (Jim(dot)Nasby(at)BlueTreble(dot)com) wrote:
> On 2/25/15 4:10 PM, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >
> >On 02/25/2015 11:59 AM, Joe Conway wrote:
> >>>
> >>>It's largely because of such uncertainties that I have been advised
> >>>in the past (by those with appropriate letters after their names)
> >>>to stop using the Artistic licence. This is why I spent nearly a
> >>>year working on changing pgAdmin to the PostgreSQL licence.
> >>I committed this (1 July 2004), but cannot remember any details about
> >>a license discussion. And I searched the list archives and curiously
> >>cannot find any email at all about it either. Maybe Andrew remembers
> >>something.
> >>
> >>I doubt we want to rip it out without some suitable replacement -- do we?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >That's more than 10 years ago. I remember creating this for my then work
> >at the North Carolina State Highway Patrol and sending it to Joe, but
> >that's about the extent of my recollection.
> >
> >If the Artistic License isn't acceptable. I guess we'd have to try to
> >get the code relicensed, or reimplement the function ourselves. There
> >are numerous implementations out there we could copy from or use as a
> >basis for reimplementation, including several licensed under the Apache
> >2.0 license - is that compatible with ours?
>
> Perhaps a company large enough to have in-house counsel
> (EnterpriseDB?) could get a quick legal opinion on the license
> before we start pursuing other things? Perhaps this is just a
> non-issue...

For my 2c (IANAL), I'm not convinced that it's an issue either.. I've
certainly not heard of anyone complaining about it either, so..

That said, we could also through SPI which might get us a bit of
pro-bono work, if we really wanted to pursue this. Just a hunch, but as
they tend to be conservative (lawyers in general), I expect the answer
we'd get is "yes, it might conflict and if you want to avoid any issues
you wouldn't include it."

To that end, I'd suggest -core simply formally ask the authors about it.
Once we have that answer, we can figure out what to do. In my
experience, at least, it's a lot better to go that route and figure out
what the original authors really *intended* than to go get a lawyer to
weigh in on it. One of those approaches is both free and gives a clear
answer, while the other is expensive and doesn't provide any real
certainty. :)

Thanks,

Stephen