On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 09:47:09AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> The core team has considered this matter, and has concluded that it's
> time to establish a firm project policy that we will not accept any code
> that is known to be patent-encumbered. The long-term legal risks and
> complications involved in doing that seem insurmountable, given the
> community's amorphous legal nature and the existing Postgres license
> wording (neither of which are open for negotiation here). Furthermore,
> Postgres has always been very friendly to creation of closed-source
> derivatives, but it's hard to see how inclusion of patented code would
> not cause serious problems for those. The potential benefits of
> accepting patented code just don't seem to justify trying to navigate
> these hazards.
+1.
You should probably consider accepting code that involves patents that
are in the public domain or expired by the time of release, though even
that involves some legal costs you might not want to incur. E.g., what
if a US patent is in the public domain but a corresponding EU patent is
not? A search could be done, naturally, but professional patent
searches are not cheap!
Nico
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