[postgis-users] Is PostGIS effectively LGPL?

[Bruce Momjian]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 04:21:09PM -0500, Regina Obe wrote:
> > Well, these license issues can change if we rely just on intent,
> > e.g.  Oracle buys Sun.  It is good to have it in an FAQ that
> > everyone can read.  You can change the FAQ, but as long as the text
> > is there people are clear.
>
> I'm all for clarity.  How's this as added to FAQ. I think these points

Yes, improving the FAQ is probably the way to go.

> are fairly clear based on GPL and unfuzzify some of the linking issues
> the GPL glosses over.
>
> 1) If you are providing PostGIS via SaaS platform you do not need to
> provide source code of your application or SaaS platform to customers
> since you are not distributing binaries.

True.

> 2) If you provide a closed source fork of PostgreSQL or some other
> database platform that uses PostGIS as an extension, you should
> distribute PostGIS separately from the core application/database
> platform if you do not want to be obliged to provide the source code
> of your closed fork to your customers.

I think this is explaining how to avoid the requirement rather than
explaining the requirement first.  I think you need to state that if you
ship PostGIS together with a closed-source Postgres server binary, you
need to provide source code for the server binary and all other object
files shipped in the same package.  To avoid this, you can ship PostGIS
seprately.

> 3) If your version of PostGIS requires changing the source code of
> PostGIS in any way, you must provide these changes to customers in
> source code form as well as your whole application if you distribute
> them together.

I don't think you have to ship your application source code in this
case.

> 4) If you develop an extension that relies on PostGIS, you do not need
> to distribute the source of this extension unless you are distributing
> PostGIS library together with the extension.

I think that is true.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce at momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I.  As I am, so you will be. +
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