Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Licence: GNU/GPL

Spoken like a true *BSD person. I'm on the board of the Open Source Initiative
(current maintainer of the Open Source Definition). None of us would ever
characterize the GPL as "anti-open source".

To paraphrase Woody Allen (who quipped "the lamb may lie down with the lion,
but the lamb won't get very much sleep"), if you value the freedom to hack on
source code, the GPL enables the lamb (an individual programmer) to lie down
with the lion (large corporate interests who could take the code down a
proprietary path) without losing sleep. Also, I don't see this as anti-closed
source--just pro-programmer.

M

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

> On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
>
>>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>We currently have a BSD license, the archetypal open-source license.
>>The GPL is similar to BSD, except that it has certain anti-closed source
>>(proprietary) restrictions. Many PostgreSQL developers question the
>>need for such restrictions and we therefore will continue with the BSD
>>license for the for-seeable future.
>>
>
> GPL is kinda 'anti-open source' too, IMHO ... it puts restrictions on what
> you can do with the source code, so it isn't *really* "free to do with as
> you wish" ...
>
>
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