Re: Basic JSON support

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Joseph Adams
<joeyadams3(dot)14159(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Here's one thing I'm worried about: the bison/flex code in your patch
> looks rather similar to the code in
> http://www.jsonlint.com/bin/jsonval.tgz , which is licensed under the
> GPL.  In particular, the incorrect number regex I discussed above can
> also be found in jsonval verbatim.  However, because there are a lot
> of differences in both the bison and flex code now,  I'm not sure
> they're close enough to be "copied", but I am not a lawyer.  It might
> be a good idea to contact Ben Spencer and ask him for permission to
> license our modified version of the code under PostgreSQL's more
> relaxed license, just to be on the safe side.

With the help and motivation of David Fetter, I sent an e-mail to Ben
Spencer (google "jsonval", check out the git repo, and look in the git
log to find his e-mail address) a few minutes ago, asking if he would
license jsonval under a license compatible with PostgreSQL, and am
currently awaiting a response.

If he doesn't respond, or outright refuses (which I, for one, doubt
will happen), my fallback plan is to rewrite the JSON validation code
by drawing from my original code (meaning it won't be in bison/flex)
and post a patch for it. Unfortunately, it seems to me that there
aren't very many ways of expressing a JSON parser in bison/flex, and
thus the idea of JSON parsing with bison/flex is effectively locked
down by the GPL unless we can get a more permissive license for
jsonval. But, I am not a lawyer.