Re: Deployment of PostgreSQL Applications

"Mike Arace" <mikearace(at)hotmail(dot)com> writes:

> 1) Is it legal to bundle Postgresql with another commercial application,
> assuming the database will have to be significantly reconfigured and tuned?
> (at the application level, not the source code level) I read over the
> licenses I could find on the site and they seemed to imply that the answer
> was yes, but I'd like to reaffirm that.

Yes, the PG license is BSD, so you can do that. IANAL, but there
shouldn't be any problem.

> 2) More importantly, is it possible to prevent a customer from peeking into
> said database once it is deployed on their machine? A large part of what
> makes my application proprietary is the data model in the database, and it'd
> be tough to maintain a competative edge when everyone can see exactly how I
> do things in the database by logging into their postgres account, adding
> some users and changing permissions on their machine. I really need to make
> sure the database is bulletproof before I can begin deployment.

Fat chance. Give it up.

Think about it. It's *their* machine. They have root. The PG file
format is, if not documented, reverse-engineerable from freely
available sources. But they don't even need to do that, since they
can just 'su' to the Postgres user and do whatever.

Even with Oracle or another proprietary DB I don't think you could do
what you want to do, unless you sell them the box, keep root on it
yourself, never let them touch it, and make them go through a web/XML
interface for everything, in which case PG will do just as well.

If you want to prevent them peeking, use legal/contractual means,
because technical ones won't work.

Have fun.

-Doug
--
Free Dmitry Sklyarov!
http://www.freesklyarov.org/

We will return to our regularly scheduled signature shortly.