Something very important was recently raised on the misc@openbsd.org
list. Due to the current environment that SCO is fostering in the
open source community, it would be prudent for the PostgreSQL team to
consider this issue.
The website claims that "PostgreSQL is distributed under the flexible
BSD license". A glance at the license appears to confirm this,
however, there is a misplaced modifier in the first paragraph
following the copyright notices:
"Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose, WITHOUT FEE, and without a written
agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice
and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all
copies."
I have used CAPS to highlight the apparent error. There are two ways
to interpret this statement. One interpretation is that permission is
given and no fee will be charged for the granting of that permission.
The other is that permission is given so long as by using the software
no fee is charged to others. The result of this ambiguity is that the
latest CD release of OpenBSD (3.4) no longer includes Postgresql. It
is on the ftp sites, but the OpenBSD CDs are distributed for a fee
because they are a profit generator for the project. The project has
encountered problems in the past regarding ambiguous licenses, and as
a result the need to protect the porject outweighs the convenience of
distributing packages with ambiguous licenses.
I believe that this is merely a bug in the wording of the license, and
that it doesn't reflect the intention of the project. I hope that my
words will be considered carefully, and that appropriate steps will be
taken to resolve this problem.
Thank you.
Breen Ouellette
OpenBSD & PostgreSQL user
