[postgis] Licencing

Paul Ramsey pramsey at refractions.net
Fri Aug 3 12:20:51 PDT 2001


My goodness, get more than one open-source people in a room, and it's
only a matter of time until a licencing discussion breaks out.

So, itemized:

1) PostGIS is under the GPL
2) PostgreSQL is under a BSD'ish licence
3) BSD permits source modification and redistribution
4) GPL permits source modification and redistribution
5) BSD permits redistribution of modified binaries only
6) GPL does not permit redistribution of modified binaries only

So the only problem is if someone takes PostgreSQL closed and bundles
PostGIS while they're at it. And I do not think I care if I make life
inconvenient to someone who wants to close-source PostgreSQL :) if they
want to do that, they can simply not include PostGIS, no problemo.
However, it is unlikely we'll ever move out of contrib and into the
mainline distribution while there is a licence conflict.

-- 
      __
     /
     | Paul Ramsey
     | Refractions Research
     | Email: pramsey at refractions.net
     | Phone: (250) 885-0632
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