Re: [pgsql-hackers-win32] What's left?

Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> Jan Wieck wrote:
>> The BSD license allows everyone to use the code in proprietary software.
>> But that doesn't mean that you can relicense THAT code. I seem to
>> remember that one of our arguments against license changes was that we'd
>> need written agreement from all former contributors. Is that wrong?

> You know, that is a good point. When someone makes a proprietary
> version of PostgreSQL, what are they licensing as proprietary? The
> binary or our source code? When someone takes our code, modifies it,
> then makes a propriety version, are their additions only proprietary?

ISTM that their own additions and changes are theirs, and can be
licensed under any license they want (in this way BSD is unlike GPL,
which tries to constrain how other people license their own work).

However, someone who makes a modified version does not own the original
unmodified Postgres code. Our license allows them to *use* that code
pretty much however they please, but that is not the same as saying they
*own* it. In particular, they could not try to stop other people
(including us) from using the original code according to our own license
terms, not theirs.

From a practical point of view, a third party buying the hypothetical
"MS PG" from MS wouldn't necessarily know or care that there were parts
of it that MS didn't own. About the only thing MS could do that would
actively violate our license would be to ship the source code with the
original copyright notices stripped off. But they'd be highly unlikely
to want to ship source code anyway.

I think our argument that we can't relicense is based on the assumption
that we are maintaining and continuing the "original" Postgres, not
developing a "derived" version. We could certainly choose to put all
new work done after, say, next Wednesday under a different license.
But it seems a tad pointless as long as any significant remnant of the
original code remains. If we want to consider the code body as a
unitary whole and not two parts, we need one license.

regards, tom lane