[postgis-devel] License

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

Paul Ramsey wrote:

> David Fetter from PgSQL has been bugging me about bringing PostGIS
> into PgSQL proper. As it stands now, doing so is not possible: PostGIS
> is GPL, PgSQL is BSD. The only way it would work would be to
> re-license, and that would require the approval of all the copyright
> holders, basically all the major authors, ever.

Yeah; that's quite a hard task. I'm not sure exactly how I'd feel about 
having my work re-licensed as BSD at the moment either.

> I used to just not contemplate this stuff, but things like this
> <http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/GIS_Functions> give me pause. Perhaps I
> am over-valuing the advantage "built-in" features have over add-ons,
> particularly with things like the new PgSQL package distribution
> system. Maybe this could be solved with PgSQL giving selected add-ons
> (like ours) better marketing in the main site, rather than integrating
> the code itself.

I don't think this is such a big problem as you make out. The 
"one-click" EDB installers make things reasonably painless and blur the 
line between what is core project and what is not. Most people will just 
fire up Stackbuilder on Windows and install PostGIS without thinking 
about it.

> However, I am interested to hear what other people think. Whether
> integrating would be a good idea, in general. Whether attempting to do
> it would be worth the hassle, in practice.

Things that make me not want to do this are:

- We still don't have an official PSC, so how will we handle major 
decisions?

- As soon as PostGIS hits the main project, we become restricted in the 
amount of changes we can do and when we can do them (think about 
creating experimental branches). Hopefully enforcing the "no API changes 
in point releases" rule will go some way towards helping this...

- Reverting to CVS. Enough said. If PostgreSQL were to move to git, then 
I'd be quite happy if PostGIS did the same. My personal opinion is that 
a change to a DVCS for the main project is long overdue.

- Since PostgreSQL for Win32 requires MSVC to build, someone would have 
to create a Win32 build system (much easier with 1.4) and a suitable 
regression test harness that allows for everything that is *not* SQL 
related to be tested (e.g. shp2pgsql/pgsql2shp etc.) before it could be 
integrated.

On the plus side:

- We should be able to integrate with the PostgreSQL buildfarm.


In short: while it sounds interesting in theory, I don't think either 
project is in a position where it can accept the other at the moment. 
Plus the Stackbuilder/EDB installers do a reasonably good job in making 
the installation seamless as it stands.


ATB,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Cave-Ayland
Sirius Corporation - The Open Source Experts
http://www.siriusit.co.uk
T: +44 870 608 0063