Re: Re: [COMMITTERS] psqlodbc - psqlodbc: Put Autotools-generated files into subdirectory

Hiroshi Inoue wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> >Robert Treat wrote:
> >>On Monday 07 May 2007 15:52, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >>>Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >>>>Hiroshi Inoue wrote:
> >>>>>Maybe it's BSD which is different from the license of psqlodbc (LGPL).
> >>>>>Is there no problem with their coexistence ?
> >>>>>Or is it possible for psqlodbc to be LGPL entirely ?
> >>>>I am having difficulty in understanding what the problem is. My
> >>>>understanding is that using BSD licensed code is ok in an LGPL project,
> >>>>but (probably) not vice versa.
> >>>To my knowledge you can do it either way, as long as you remember that
> >>>any changes to the lgpl code have to be released.
> >>It's generally a very bad idea for a BSD licensed project to include lgpl
> >>licensed code because people who try and use your work in thier own
> >>projects, under the assumption that it really is bsd licensed, get
> >>bitten when they find out that they have now illegally included code that
> >>is licensed via some other license.
> >
> >Of course, the developer who owns the LGPL-licensed copyright is free to
> >relicense his work under a different license, so if the ODBC developers
> >want to contribute code to Postgres they can give their work under the
> >Postgres license. (They must obtain permission from all the involved
> >developers, obviously).
>
> There are no original developers in the project now and I don't know
> where or how they are now. I personally am not so eager to change the
> license to BSD because it has been LGPL too long.

Yes, that is a problem for releasing old code whose developers are long
gone. (What I was thinking was copying *new* code from psqlodbc into
Postgres).

> Oppositely I thought
> we can implement the BSD licensed autoconf macros by ourselves but I'm
> not sure how it can be considered as *not derived*.

ISTM it would be necessary to get legal advice to be sure that it would
be considered not derived, but one would think that that's too much
hassle for something that can be done much more simply by including the
differently-licensed files in the first place, which is legal anyway.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.