Re: PostrgreSQL Commercial restrictions?

From: David Johnston <polobo(at)yahoo(dot)com>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: PostrgreSQL Commercial restrictions?
Date: 2013-08-07 15:43:06
Message-ID: 1375890186092-5766674.post@n5.nabble.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-general

I am not a lawyer and cannot evaluate your risk profile and usage but:

Simply connecting to, creating objects, and running queries against
PostgreSQL does not encumber your external application at all. The database
schema you create (the objects inside the database) is not affected.

Deploying PostgreSQL may be restricted but in the general case if the
installation of PostgreSQL is totally independent of anything your
application does you have no problem. I believe your application can cause
PostgreSQL to be installed without issue as well.

Where the PostgreSQL license comes into play is if you make alterations to
the PostgreSQL database itself - the underlying engine implemented in C and
to some degree the supporting utilities written in various languages.
Anything contributed to the core PostgreSQL project becomes open-source but
you are permitted to create a commercial port of PostgreSQL with proprietary
code under terms different from those for the core PostgreSQL project. As
your application is most likely NOT one of these ports I'll stop here.

If you want better answers you need to be more open and specific with your
questions. If you cannot do that on a community forum then you will need to
hire a lawyer (which since you want to profit from your application you
should probably do anyway).

Regardless, and especially if you do not hire a lawyer, you should research
other companies that provide professional PostgreSQL services as well as
ports of the database to get a feel for what the PostgreSQL license has
allowed them to do.

In short the license is very commerce friendly and because the database is
often physically and logically separate from your application (you simply
use the database instead of trying to offer database functionality directly
to your users) the degree of encumbering that the database places on the
application is generally minimal if any at all.

David J.

--
View this message in context: http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/PostrgreSQL-Commercial-restrictions-tp5766666p5766674.html
Sent from the PostgreSQL - general mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

In response to

Responses

Browse pgsql-general by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Adrian Klaver 2013-08-07 15:43:22 Re: PostrgreSQL Commercial restrictions?
Previous Message David Johnston 2013-08-07 15:23:15 Re: Staging Database