[postgis-users] The first release of the PostGIS Add-ons is out!

[Vincent Picavet]

Hi,
Sorry for complicating things.

Le mardi 19 novembre 2013 21:48:11, Pierre Racine a écrit :
> > 1. If it is GPL and I add it to my code them my code has to be licensed
> > undr GPL. This is problematic for most business. If I have a proprietary
> > product that I'm spent 100's of thousands of hours to develop and
> > believe that it is critical to my success, there is no way that I can
> > afford to allow GPL code into it. This is not a judgement call on the
> > correctness of this thinking. And the GPL advocates will have similar
> > arguments from their point of view.
> 
> My point is that, if you want to integrate it with something more
> restrictive, it is always very easy to separate them in different files
> with a different licensing scheme mostly because PL/pgSQL is not compiled.

Having a script language does not exclude problems wrt to GPL, it just adds 
complexity.
Python for example has made some work on the legal issues related to having 
gpl modules. At the end the conclusion was that having a "import" is just like 
having a link in a compiled language, and as a consequence triggers the GPL 
terms for "contamination".

As for Pl/PgSQL, such a legal research has not been made, so it's a grey zone. 
As doing such a work is just a boring and uninteresting job, I would say skip 
this problem and choose simplicity and clarity.

PostGIS is a widely distributed project, and do not need the GPL licence any 
longer to enforce its opensource nature. I know it's also a matter of belief 
and opinions may vary, but in this case, going GPL for Pl/PgSQL code is just 
entering a grey area.

If you want to keep away from that, make it simple : MIT, BSD, CC0, whatever 
is most compatible with everything. We want to simplify the life of users, not 
complicate it.

> I'm going with GPL...
-1 for me if I may have an advice. 

I have some postgis functions here and there to contribute too, but please 
make it simple !

Vincent