Re: responses to licensing discussion - Mailing list pgsql-general

Mike Mascari wrote:
> Ned Lilly wrote:
> >
> >
> > The second point, forcing a click-through or some other mechanism
> > before a user downloads/installs the software, gets at the same
> > issue.  As a developer, you only get the protection of UCITA if the
> > user *agrees* to the license... right now, just having it in the
> > tarball or on the CD doesn't meet that test.  There needs to be some
> > proactive mechanism that signifies user acceptance of the terms, or
> > else the license is just words.  The recent passage in the US of
> > digital signature legislation affirms the various mechanisms by
> > which you can do that.
>
> How does this affect the presence of PostgreSQL on RedHat
> distributions, where no such agreement is made? Would it require
> an interface (like Netscape) where the first time psql is started
> the terms are presented? How would that work if I justed wanted
> the server (started like any other service - sendmail, httpd,
> etc. through linuxconf) and used Access/ODBC as a frontend? Is
> this requirement something new?

    Seems  to  be  something  new in the open source world.  Most
    commercial software I've seen doesn't install  if  you  don't
    accept the license terms in such a click-through way (did you
    ever install some MS products?).

    As a developer, I like to  get  the  protection.  So  if  the
    wording  in  the  tarball  doesn't buy it for me, it's wasted
    bandwidth and we should better remove it.

    For source distributions I think it's easy to add such a step
    to the configure process. A switch like --accept-license that
    just suppresses the y/n question (not the displaying  of  the
    license itself) should do it for the hackers.

    So the problem left are binary distributions.

    I'm  in doubt why none of the other open source projects ever
    felt the need to enforce license agreement in this way  while
    most  commercial  players  do.  Maybe it's something we don't
    have to worry about, but what if so?  What  if  we  all  have
    already  one  foot  in jail and just don't know? Oh boy, what
    about all the patches,  modules,  whatnot  I  contributed  to
    other  open  source  projects during the past 20 years? Can I
    sleep well tonight?

    Well, most of the things I've done in the past 20 years don't
    made  it  that  far  that  they  became a threat for some big
    player. This time it's  different  and  I  welcome  any  real
    lawyers  advice.  If  it  means we cannot distribute binaries
    unless the install procedures provide a license-click-through
    feature, that might be it until they do.


Jan

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