[postgis] Re: [PATCHES] contrib/postgis spatial extensions

[Daniel Morissette]

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> 
> Tom Lane wrote:
> >
> > Paul Ramsey <pramsey at refractions.net> writes:
> > > This is something which has been discussed on our list in the past. The
> > > main argument for BSD to date has been as you noted: to get eventual
> > > mainline pgsql inclusion. The main argument against, in my view, is that
> > > we want to be a place where open geomatics code can aggregate.
> >
> > A fair point.  The BSD theory about this is that open source process
> > is enough better than closed source that you can achieve critical mass
> > anyway, but if you haven't seen that happen for yourself it's hard to
> > take on faith.
> >


Another argument that I see in favor of BSD licensing is that it allows
proprietary software vendors to include and distribute support for
PostGIS in their software.  Even though lots of people may see this as a
bad thing, I think it would just help PostGIS if it was adopted by
commercial software and not just by Open Source software... after all,
don't you want it to run in as many places as possible?  And anyway you
cannot ignore the fact that most GIS users use proprietary software and
they'll want to be able to use PostGIS as well.

Another example where BSD/MIT licensing is better is that proprietary
software vendors will sometimes accept to fund development in an Open
Source package as long as they can include it in the software they sell
without limitation... *AND* that they can benefit from the improvements
made to it by the Open Source community (believe me it really works and
it's a win-win situation for both you and the one who funds the
development).  AFAIK this is not possible with a GPL license so you lose
several potential sources of funding for further developments. 

Just my 0.02$...
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
 Daniel Morissette               morissette at dmsolutions.ca
 DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------
  Don't put for tomorrow what you can do today, because if 
      you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.

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