[postgis-users] The first release of the PostGIS Add-ons is out!

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 11/19/2013 2:42 PM, Pierre Racine wrote:
>> IMHO, It's fine (actually wonderful) that postgis is in the GPL, it
>> protects the project and does not really limit its use in any
>> substantive way.  It's big enough to stand on its own.  But re: #2
>> GPL would limit the wide use of these scripts.
>
> How would GPL limit the wide use of these scripts? I find it's ok
> that any derivative be licensed the same way. It doesn't force a
> using software to be completely under GPL, just the derivative
> scripts of those scripts. It seems to me that the fact that PL/pgSQL
> is open by nature makes it very easy to redistribute these files or
> any derivative with the same license without limiting the rest of the
> software to be under any other kind of license. Does that make
> sense?

I'm not a lawyer, but this is my simplistic understanding of these 
license issue.

1. If it is GPL and I add it to my code them my code has to be licensed 
undr GPL. This is problematic for most business. If I have a proprietary 
product that I'm spent 100's of thousands of hours to develop and 
believe that it is critical to my success, there is no way that I can 
afford to allow GPL code into it. This is not a judgement call on the 
correctness of this thinking. And the GPL advocates will have similar 
arguments from their point of view.

2. If it licensed BSD or CC-0, it can be used by everyone without 
restrictions and can be incorporated into GPL works without a problem. 
It simply provides wider and unrestricted use or the product.

The more complicated issue is related to what is the dividing line 
between GPL code and Not GPL code and at what point does your the Not 
GPL code become GPL because you crossed that line. But that is an issue 
for the lawyers and does not really impact your decision on how to 
license your code.

Its your code, pick the one you want.

-Steve