Re: contrib/pg_filedump - PostgreSQL File Dump Utility

On Wed, 6 Feb 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

> I'd kinda like to see us go back to the contributors and get them
> all relicensed as BSD (or at the very least LGPL). I think that
> distributing these as we do is only marginally legit --- it's
> debatable whether this is "mere aggregation" under the terms
> of the GPL, given that the contrib modules are fairly closely
> bound to the rest of the distribution.

I think the big question is, "does the main distribution (backend, libpq,
etc.) depend on the GPL'd bits being there?" As I think the anser is no,
then there is no GPL issue. The GPL'd code can be tied to non-GPL'd code
in other programs. As another example, it is specifically ok for the *BSDs
to ship GPL'd kernel modules, as the bound result (dynamic linking)
doesn't get distributed.

A niggle might be if libpq or one of the other libraries had a
GPL-incompatable license (like BSD with advertizing clause) and was
statically linked into a binary produced from contrib. Such a resulting
binary would probably be in the you-can't-distribute category. But the
COPYRIGHT at the top of the source tree doesn't have an advertizing
clause, so this problem really isn't. :-)

Take care,

Bill