Author: David Storrs <spammable@dstorrs.com>
Page: 7.4/preface.html
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Muhammed (or anyone with the same concern) - I'm not on the Postgres dev team, so I can't really speak for them, but I
thinkit's safe to say that you will never be charged fees to use Postgres. In order to charge you fees, the copyright
holderswould (in practice) need to change the license. Getting that many open source developers to agree on a license
changewould be very difficult and, even if it happened, they could only change the license for future releases, not
onesthat were already out there. So, let's say they release 8.0 under the current license and then release 8.1 under a
licensethat says "you must give us your firstborn child and a million dollars if you want to use this". So long as you
continueto use 8.0, you don't owe anything. And, because of the nature of the license on 8.0, you can hire developers
tomaintain it for you as a work-for-hire, without having to pay ongoing fees. (In all probability, a new open source
no-feeproject would spring up a!
nd you wouldn't have to pay for it anyway.)
