Re: [HACKERS] proposed improvements to PostgreSQL license

Ned Lilly <ned(at)greatbridge(dot)com> writes:

> We've also found, through some rather extensive market
> research, that the business community (to which we'll be selling
> products and services) vastly prefers it over GPL, or hybrids like
> Mozilla, etc.

That depends on what your market is - for businesses who wants to be
able to hide source, yes. For businesses who use it, being sure the
source is available is the best - which the GPL guarantees. BSD gives
the middle man more freedom to screw the end user ;)

> What we'd like to propose is a general tightening up of what the
> existing license is *supposed* to be doing in the first place -
> protecting the developers who worked on the code, and ensuring that
> the code stays open source in perpetuity.

GPL would solve this - the main advantage of BSDish licenses is you
can go closed source if you want to.

Now, I don't advocate a change in license - my main consern is "there
are enough licenses in the world". I think the "each package one
license" is a bad trend.

--
Trond Eivind Glomsrød
Red Hat, Inc.