Ron, probably the best example to reassure you here is Illustra/Informix,
which is based on the old Berkeley Postgres code. A group of people at
Berkeley "forked" the Postgres code into the closed Illustra system, but it
survived as Postgres95, then later PostgreSQL when Marc and Bruce got
started.
As a number of people have said, if someone (like Great Bridge or anyone
else) ever took the then-current PostgreSQL code proprietary, it would still
remain as an open source project - and believe me, there are plenty of
people who would rather work on it as an open source project than a
proprietary death-spiral.
We think the proprietary software development model for large scale projects
(operating systems, databases, wide-ranging applications) is stupid and
dead. We don't think open source is going away - in fact, we think it's the
way most software is going to be developed in the future. There will
certainly be companies that try and fork off open source projects and make a
quick buck; they will fail.
As I understand your concern, you don't want to make a learning investment
in something you think is open source, only to have it go closed? I think I
can safely say that PostgreSQL as an open source project will never go away
- the momentum is too strong, the product is too good, the developers are
too committed, for that to happen.
Best,
Ned
Ron Peterson wrote:
> I'm not trying to rankle the developers who have benefited me so much by
> promoting the GPL. I'm just trying to protect myself as a consumer from
> being left in the cold when the product I've spent so much time learning
> and implementing suddenly goes proprietary.
>
> Sorry to be cynical, but as a consumer, I can't help seeing BSD licenses
> as good old bait and switch. And this discussion doesn't reassure me
> otherwise.
>
> Sure, the code can fork. SunOS, AIX, HPUX are good examples. Examples
> of the kind of code forking and corporatism I thought, I hoped, the
> world was moving away from.
>
> ________________________
> Ron Peterson
> rpeterson@yellowbank.com
