On Tue, 4 Jul 2000, Philip Warner wrote:
> >One issue that has always been a source of uncertainty - I think for
> >all of us - has been the license under which PostgreSQL is
> >distributed.
>
> Only an issue of uncertainty when people talk about changing it.
>
> As a company who wants PostgreSQL to remain in the public domain, I would
> prefer to see it go GPL; this effectively prevents another company coming
> along and swallowing the major developers as a means of stifling further
> development. This latter tactic would probably never work, but it would be
> extermely disruptive.
Actually, with the BSD license as it is now, that isn't an issue either
... if someone where to come along and 'close the source', that license
change couldn't only be on future changes, not past ones ... as Vadim has
stated previously, he'd just go off and branch off the code and continue
open source ...
> >We've also found, through some rather extensive market
> >research
>
> Out of curiosity, who with & where?
Americans ... I do not believe they've done any market research in any
country out of the USofA, but I may be wrong here ...
> >This deficiency has two adverse affects. First, the contributing
> >developers are not afforded the protection of the exculpatory
> >language in "bold face."
>
> I agree this is a problem. Developers should be warned to always add some
> kind of text like this to all their public code - not just PG.
And any developer is more then welcome to add that to their patches when
they submit it ... just nobody has done it to date ...
> >In developing the new language, the resources of two intellectual
> >property law firms, one East Coast and one West Coast, were tapped.
>
> What about European (east and west), Japanese, and Australian?
hey, what about Canadian, where this project operates out of? It isn't an
American project, it is "Proudly Canadian" with a crack team of developers
around the world working on it ... by number(s), I would guess that the
majority of our developers are non-US citizens ...
> What is it? Does it even apply to me? [I am awaiting advice on this
> from my IP lawyer]
From my undertanding, it only applies to those states (US) that have
passed UCITA through legislature ... which, I believe, only accounts for 2
states right now out of 52, and zero other countries are even considering
it (but on that point I might be mistaken) ...
Marc G. Fournier ICQ#7615664 IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy@hub.org secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org
