[postgis-users] Using PostGIS in commercial application

Greg Troxel gdt at ir.bbn.com
Wed Dec 28 05:10:33 PST 2011


  From: Josh Jordan <joshjordan at robotjosh.com>

  I think it should be ok as long as you open source any custom patches in
  the postgis that you distribute.

This doesn't make sense - that would be for LGPL, more or less.
Certainly one has to provide the source to the GPL component, modified
or not, and regardless of bundling.  Perhaps you meant that the bundling
is not distribution, but the GPL obligations on the underlying postgis
distribution remain, in which case I think we agree.

The question is whether the entire installer is a derived work under
copyright law.  If it is, then the GPL components may not be distributed
unless the entire bundle is offered under the GPL.  Answering te
is-it-a-derived-work question is close to impossible, depends on one's
jurisdiction, and requires an IP lawyer who understands open source
licensing.

There's a further subtlely, which is whether code that uses postgis's
interfaces is a derived work.  This sort of claim is made for Linux
kernel modules.  But, generally no one claims that talking regular SQL
results in a derived work (partly because it's a standard), and this
issue seems to be mostly limited to compilation of modules/plugins
against GPL-licensed headers.  But something else to discuss with
counsel :-)
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