Re: IBM releases 500 patents

Darcy Buskermolen wrote:
> On January 11, 2005 08:34 am, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 08:13:01AM -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > > Darcy Buskermolen wrote:
> > > >IBM has just announced they are waving all rights and providing access
> > > > to 500 patents. In the list of 500 there are several that relate RDBMS
> > > > and query optimizations, it may be worth a look.
> > > >
> > > >http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2005/01/patents.html
> > >
> > > Except in the event of a lawsuit.
> >
> > And derived closed-source products like SRA's or CMD's Postgres
> > offerings would not be able to include whatever is covered by the patents.
>
> In that pg uses a BSD license, which is supported by OSO and which allows for:
>
> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
> modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
>
> * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this
> list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
>
> * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
> this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
> and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
>
>
> I can't see binary modified distros like those offred by CP and SRA would be
> breaking this license.

The new distros have their own license on top of the existing one that
gives ownership to the company distributing it and requiring payment for
those using it, so they have a different license than BSD.

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