[postgis-users] Using PostGIS in commercial application

[Paul Ramsey]

The Gimp and Gtk are under the same basic licensing, so it's hardly a
great example in this case. I take my lead from EnterpriseDB, which
installs their proprietary PostgreSQL without PostGIS but allows you
to add PostGIS later as an option. Their "work" that they distribute
does not include PostGIS by default, and by design after consultations
with their legal team.

"You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole
or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part
thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties
under the terms of this License."

The question hinges on whether an integrated installer is a "work",
and as I noted in my response, it is at best a grey area, certainly
not a region of guaranteed certainty one way or another.

P.

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 3:17 PM, Josh Jordan <joshjordan at robotjosh.com> wrote:
> I think it should be ok as long as you open source any custom patches in the
> postgis that you distribute.  Its common for installers to guide you thru a
> series of installations, you can see that in action if you try to install
> gimp for windows, it will first guide you thru installing gtk.
>
> -Josh Jordan
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 4:15 PM, Paul Ramsey <pramsey at opengeo.org> wrote:
>>
>> I would say that, by bundling everything into one installer, you're
>> beginning to brush up against the GPL's derived product language,
>>
>> "You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole
>> or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part
>> thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties
>> under the terms of this License."
>>
>> Since you are distributing a work that contains a GPL component. The
>> simple expedient would be to distribute two installers, one for the
>> database (and anything else you don't mind being covered by the GPL),
>> and one for your application.
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Andrew Smolko <andrewsmolko at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Hi!
>> >
>> > We want to use PostGIS in our server commercial application and there
>> > has arisen a question about violation of PostGIS license.
>> > To simplify the installation of our product for customers we want to
>> > create an install package which includes our server application,
>> > PostgreSQL and PostGIS. We do not modify PostGIS in any way, we just
>> > take official binaries zip file and include its contents in our
>> > installation.
>> >
>> > Do we violate PostGIS GPL license by doing the way I described?
>> >
>> > Thanks in advance!
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > postgis-users mailing list
>> > postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
>> > http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
>> _______________________________________________
>> postgis-users mailing list
>> postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
>> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> postgis-users mailing list
> postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
>