Re: License question - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Tom Lane wrote:

>No, that says that you can't remove the copyright notice from files that
>have it.  It doesn't say that nearby files have to have the same
>license.  (Compare to the GPL, which *does* say that.)
>
>The bottom line here is that you cannot relicense code you didn't write;
>this is generally true no matter what license it is distributed under.
>  
>
No it isn't. If I write code under the LGPL, for example, all you have 
to do in order to relicense it is make sure you live up to all of my 
requirements.  In particular, this means that you CAN relicense it as 
GPL, without asking for my permission. Distributing it as GPL makes sure 
all of my restrictions are met.

If I relicense this code as LGPL, however, I cannot guarentee that all 
of my derived work will have the banners (the LGPL does guarentee that 
the copyright notice stay). Hence, I read it as "you cannot use this 
code in an LGPL project".

>You can take some Postgres pieces and use them in a project with a
>different overall license, but those pieces are still under BSD license.
>  
>
But that's not the BSD license.

>            regards, tom lane
>  
>
But that, in turn, means I cannot put them in an LGPL licensed project 
(or in a proprietary one, but that's not my problem). The LGPL requires 
that all files under the same project be under the LGPL.

The BSD license, in contrast to PostgreSQL's, does NOT require me to 
copy license related texts around, only the copyrights themselves. It 
does pose certain restrictions on what I am allowed to do with the 
copyrights, but any modern free software license (GPL included) require 
that you keep the copyright notices around

Now, I'm not trying to heal the world. It's enough to me that the 
current copyright owners give me permissions to use the code under the 
LGPL license. I am saying that calling the PostgreSQL license "BSD 
license" is misleading.

I'll also mention that I am, very likely, wrong in my interpretation of 
the license. The PostgreSQL license is very similar to the X11 license 
(http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html), which is interpreted by the FSF 
to be GPL compatible 
(http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#X11License). This means 
I'm defnitely missing something here. What, however?

Oh, or is the license in my link the NEW X11 license, known to be 
non-GPL compatible?

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting
http://www.lingnu.com/