Re: postgreSQL licenseing

David Garamond wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>
>>> 1) If we just ship the PostgreSQL binaries in our product(without
>>> source code), do we need to include the BSD licence text anywhere?
>>
>> Yes. The license says "... provided that the above copyright notice
>> and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all
>> copies." Note that it doesn't say "provided that the notice is
>> displayed in annoying ways", but it needs to be accessible in
>> reasonable ways.
>
> Which of the following count as "accessible in a reasonable way"?

I am NOT a lawyer.

However, I'm a big fan of BSD-style licenses, so here's my opinion on
what's good and what's not:

> 1. in a separate text file, by itself (ala GPL's COPYING), but quite
> deep within several levels of subdirectories (e.g. under bin/ or
> etc/misc/license/).

This (legally) is acceptable, I would think. But it defeats the _spirit_
of the license, which is to give credit back to the original developers.
I would consider doing this a cop-out to avoid legal problems without
_really_ following the intent of the license.

> 2. in a binary (e.g. postgres.exe), that is, we modified the source code
> slightly so that the copyright text is embedded in the final executable.
> The executable is not compressed, so a "strings postgres" command could
> view the copyright text.

Same opinion as #1.

> 3. in a separate program file (which is included along with postgres in
> the distribution), in the Help > About menu or the splash screen, e.g.
> "Portions of this program are licensed under the BSD License:
> PostgreSQL, ..."

I think this is more along the lines of what the license was intended for.
In the case of a non-graphical program, you could have a switch
(program --license) which produces the text.

> 4. Only the URL to the license text is displayed, e.g.
> http://www.mydomain.com/etc/license/BSD.txt.

This isn't bad either.

I think the point is that people get to know where the software came from
without having to become Sherlock Holmes. 3 & 4 handle this pretty well.
I don't think the license was ever intended to overburdon you by forcing your
splash screen or home page to display credit. Legally, it would seem to
me that all 4 are OK.

But, of course, all of these are my opinion. If you're worried about legal
issues, you should consult a REAL lawyer.

--
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com