[postgis-users] Is PostGIS effectively LGPL?

Regina Obe lr at pcorp.us
Wed Dec 21 14:00:34 PST 2016


>> 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.

I think I was being a little redundant in this case.

I meant you need to make available the source code of both if you are shipping them together 
and  you always have to make available the code for the PostGIS fork as at the very least the fork would also be under GPL.

The point I was trying to make, admittedly very badly, is say you like in case of SQLite that does use PostGIS (liblgeom component) via SpatiaLite,
If you change PostGIS just so it can connect seamlessly with your forked SQLite or Firebird or whatever, then chances are you'd want to ship them together for ease of user experience.

In that case, you would be obliged to make available the source code of both parts regardless of if they are compiled together or dynamically linked.

This is redundant with the earlier of shipping PostGIS with anything even if you didn't make any changes to PostGIS, your application/database fork would still be under the GPL "uses software" vague clause.

I'm also thinking I should change the word, "provide" to "make available" as its' rare packagers ship code with the binaries
And most customers don't want the code anyway, but want it available to them should they need to change it.

Hope that clarifies things,
Regina



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