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

[Pierre Racine]

Thanks Vincent for this input.

I'll go for GPL for now as it's that a nightmare to change afterward if, really, someone complains.

I would have gone with a license saying "You can modify and redistribute as long as the derived work is also under an open license, not necessarily GPL". Does that make sense? Does that exist?

Pierre

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vincent Picavet [mailto:vincent.ml at oslandia.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 5:58 PM
> To: postgis-users at lists.osgeo.org
> Cc: Pierre Racine
> Subject: Re: [postgis-users] The first release of the PostGIS Add-ons is out!
> 
> 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