Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Licence: GNU/GPL

Don Baccus wrote:
>
> Keith G. Murphy wrote:
>
> > In the interests of exactitude, shouldn't that really be something like
> > "adversely affects the willingness"? Or "discourages commercial
> > entities from contributing..."? (Though the latter is actually a bit
> > too strong for my liking).
>
> Not to mention the fact that anyone who chooses to take a look around
> the universe will find at least as many commercial entities contributing
> to well-known GPL'd software as to well-known BSD'd software.
>
> Oracle supports Linux, not xxxBSD. IBM supports Linux, not xxxBSD.
>
> Note that I'm not arguing the merits of either license here, only the
> fact that the common argument that the GPL discourages commercial
> investment while the BSD license encourages it does not appear to
> reflect reality.

I think that has more to do with the fact that there is more visibility
with Linux. While the BSD license was still tied up in confusion over
who owned what (AT&T vs Berkeley) people started to contribute to GNU.
Linux seemed to be the first project with both. I don't think the
commercial word cared if it was a FREE-BSD OS or FREE-GNU OS license,
just that it was free and Linux seems to be (as far as features go),
BSD + more.

The GNU license discourages vertical application vendors from
contributing as they have to give away the source and expertise.

I have no problem with free source code. I do have a problem
of having to implement some source code that belongs to a customer
and they consider their database part of their competitive advantage.
By having to give away the source, they tell their competitors
how to export from their database. This does discourage commercial
work where the database and how you access it is confidential.

One advantage of PostgreSQL is that you can use it for your
customers - and THEY own the paid for source code.

The BSD license does not keep them from contributing, but it allows
them not have to when they can't give it away. GPL is great for
some things, but not for databases.