Re: RedHat attitude - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

On Mon, 16 Dec 2002, Jean-Michel POURE wrote:

> Le Dimanche 15 Décembre 2002 23:14, Gavin Sherry a écrit :
> > Red Hat employ. Tom and some other programmers who work on Postgres. They
> > don't appear to drag Tom around the world like a show pony. In fact, Red
> > Hat do not do that to any of the programmers they employ. They have to
> > make money from that and if that means selling software and services, so
> > be it. Anything Red Hat does in marketing the Red Hat Database will help
> > PostgreSQL -- it increases the market for open source databases and it
> > increases the people's exposure to PostgreSQL.
>
> Dear Gavin,
>
> I agree with you as regards employment and RedHat marketing efforts. My only
> concerns are that :
> 1) Changing PostgreSQL name to RedHat database is unfair and useless.

I disagree. Under the terms of the license they can change the
name. Presumably, they don't think it is a useless idea. Its their
problem. It does not have a detrimental effect on PostgreSQL.

> 2) RedHat may close RedHat database sources in a near future.

So? They're allowed to. The license PostgreSQL was *given* (I want to make
that very clear: 'given', 'bestowed upon', 'without which it would not
exist as you know it') allows Red Hat to do so.

More importantly, you have no proof that they will. Red Hat have a
commitment to open source. None (!) of their revenue streams / business
models use closed source code. When you speculate, without evidence, that
someone or something is going to do something, what you are saying is
slanderous. That is against the law.

Besides, their are several products which already ship PostgreSQL closed
source.


> As regards the PostgreSQL license, do you think it is ***technicaly***
> possible to close RedHat database sources? I don't know the PostgreSQL
> license enough to answer the question. Maybe you know the answer, can it be
> done by law?

As above.

Can we *please* focus on the issue at hand: PostgreSQL advocacy. So far,
lots of people seem to prefer to attack others -- whether they be MySQL AB
or Red Hat. This is a sign of immaturity and lack of experience.

While we're sitting around discussing political matters, people like Tom,
Bruce, Peter, Tatsuo, Neil, Joe, Lamar, Christopher (along with all the
other developers, documentors and translators) are putting in serious man
hours, doing work which *directly* benefits PostgreSQL and its users. And
they get a lot of work done. You only see these people talking about
other databases or products when planning how to implement features better
than they have, or when they're preparing migration documentation.

LETS GET ON WITH THE JOB.

Gavin