Re: [HACKERS] Readline use in trouble?

Bruce Momjian <maillist(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
>> That is fine if contrib includes no GPL code; if it does, I need to
>> distribute the code for that portion only. Thus, if we want to
>> maintain as broad a potential as possible (including non-source
>> distributions) we need to encourage adoption of the BSD license for
>> all source.

> But Alladin Ghostscript is distributed in source form.

But not *only* in source form. Aladdin make their living by selling
Ghostscript to printer manufacturers and so forth. The printer makers
are not about to ship out printers with copies of source code, nor
even with notices explaining where to get the printer source code.
If they obtained Ghostscript under GPL then they'd have to make not
only the PS interpreter source available, but probably the entire
firmware for the printer (it's a derived work, no?) and they are
certainly not about to do that. So they pay Aladdin for the rights
to use Ghostscript with a commercial license instead of GPL.

In the same way, if we distributed Postgres under GPL, it would not be
possible to sell proprietary systems that use Postgres as a component.
That is, in fact, exactly what the GPL is designed to prevent. But it
doesn't strike me as something we want for Postgres. We'd be cutting
off too much of the potential "market" of Postgres users. (Not only
would we lose companies who had an immediate interest in selling
DBMS-based code, but also those who had any thought of possibly doing
so in the future; that could be a lot of people.)

regards, tom lane