Re: Commercial binary support? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Sat, 2003-11-22 at 11:43, Nigel J. Andrews wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Nov 2003, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> >   I think what the person is looking for is:
> > 
> >   COMPANY PostgreSQL for Red Hat Enterprise 3.0.
> > 
> >   They probably have some commercial mandate that says that they have
> > to have a commercial company backing the product itself. This doesn't
> > work for most PostgreSQL companies because they back the "Open Source"
> > version of PostgreSQL.
> > 
> >   Where someone like Command Prompt, although we happily support the
> > Open Source version, we also sell Command Prompt PostgreSQL.
> 
> That was sort of my point. I currently have a 7.3 installation for which I have
> my own patches applied, for tsearch2, and for which I run my own CVS of the
> cpntrob module. It seems this module isn't maintained in the community, what
> with it being a 7.4 thing really. My company is the sys. admin., DBA and DB
> developer for the project, except for the production server sys. admin.. These
> mods weren't applied because the client was asking for them but because I knew
> the faults existed, even though the project wasn't kicking them.

If the patches you wrote are your own, to fix a problem, and not
reviewed by the OSS community and incorporated into an OSS project/code
base, then it would be your own proprietary modification to an OSS
codebase, and thus, if not commonly accepted, becomes yours to "own" and
sell to clients, etc Then, it's not default Postgresql from the OSS
stream. 

> Does that mean I have supplied Logictree Systems PostgreSQL? PostgreSQL with
> Logictree Systems TSearch2? And if I'd made no modifications to the code? I
> suppose I could have insisted that a separate contract be taken for the supply
> and support on top of the app. development contract. In fact, having written
> that I'm starting to think that should be the case.
> 

The thing to remember about the above, is that if your solution
eventually gets that OSS community "approval" or review, and accepted
into an open codebase and thus incorporated into a project, with
everyone's agreement, and thus becomes standard for distribution, your
code is no longer proprietary as it was accepted as the open default
solution to a problem or whatever in an open code base. 

If the latter never occurs, then I'd say, yes, you *could[read:
should?]* sell support for your modifications and call them your own
and, depending on the license used, disclose not only the changed, but
the source code to those receiving support from you for said changes.
That is, if you're at all serious about them and providing support too.

-- 
Austin Gonyou <austin@coremetrics.com>
Coremetrics, Inc.