[postgis-devel] License

[Paul Ramsey]

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.

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.

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.

For reference, this is the PgSQL license:

http://www.postgresql.org/about/licence


P