[postgis-users] Using PostGIS in commercial application

[Josh Jordan]

It would be more clear if your architecture only used postgis to serve data
to a non-postgis client application.  Maybe you can use postgis this way
without providing your custom patches.

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com> wrote:

>
>  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 :-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> postgis-users mailing list
> postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/postgis-users/attachments/20111228/9c1d4f02/attachment.html>