Re: Copyright vs Licence

On 5/10/21 4:34 AM, Vijaykumar Jain wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have been playing around with the pg_auto_failover extension by citus
> and have really enjoyed playing chaos with it.
> citusdata/pg_auto_failover: Postgres extension and service for automated
> failover and high-availability (github.com)
> <https://github.com/citusdata/pg_auto_failover>
>
> Now I see this at the bottom of this extension.
> This may be a stupid question, but i ask coz i have worked with OSS that
> been marked EOL or dead.
> Some software have started asking for fee (like oracle for supported java)
> Some software which were completely open sourced for unlimited usage (like
> sensu) now have a new version which has limited/capped free usage.
> Or the Google vs Oracle case.
>
> I know I can make a city of postgresql clusters of various sharded
> architectures, and it will still be free and postgresql is not responsible
> for any damage etc i understand, but can the extensions later charge on
> usage model.
>
> *Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
> This project is licensed under the PostgreSQL License, see LICENSE file
> for details.
> *
> I have a lame query (but i have a concern wrt how oracle acquired products
> licenses changed)
>
> What is the role of copyright in a license. (I am not sure if i am even
> framing the question correctly, but let me know if i am not).

Copyright establishes who wrote the software, and thus prevents others from
copying it (substantively) verbatim and then claiming it as their own.  Only
the copyright owner can license the software for someone else to use.

> Can I be charged for whatever reasons in the future for using this extension.

If MSFT is the sole holder of the copyright, then they can relicense it as
they see fit. *I think* that they can only change the license on *newer*
versions, so you'd be able to keep using the latest OSS version.

Of course, IANAL so take what I write with a spoonful of salt.

--
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