Re: Ingres to be released as open source - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From pgsql@mohawksoft.com
Subject Re: Ingres to be released as open source
Date
Msg-id 16408.24.91.171.78.1085591904.squirrel@mail.mohawksoft.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Ingres to be released as open source  (Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>)
List pgsql-hackers
>> Ingres is to be released as open source:
>>
>>
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/25/0043219&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=137&tid=163&tid=185&tid=198
>
> Like the article says, I wonder if these is any synergy between the
> products.  ie. Can we grab features from their codebase?
>
> Chris
>

Just to sound in here, lets be very carefull. I hate to keep harping on
the SCO non-sense, but this is frighteningly similar to what is happening
to Linux.

Think of it this way:

PostgreSQL and Ingres (I believe) probably do share some code, or at least
structure and ideas.

Now, what if CA holds up Ingres and says: "PostgreSQL contains our IP,
commercial users of PostgreSQL must pay us royalties."

You may all feel this is far fetched, but after reading groklaw I'm not so
sure it is. We really need to make sure that there is *no* "smoking gun"
to a "culture of stealing copyrighted code."

I don't believe that SCO has a case, and I don't think that PostgreSQL
would contain a single line of improperly contributed code, but all we
need is a little popularity, a high profile client, and violla!! IP
lawsuit.



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