Re: Debian readline/libedit breakage

On 02/16/2011 12:29 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> Robert Haas<robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>> On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Tom Lane<tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>>> We have code that exists in both psql and the backend (cf src/port/)
>>>> so I'm not sure this really will satisfy the more rabid GPL partisans.
>>>> And this whole discussion is about satisfying the most rabid of them,
>>>> remember. �I don't really think that anything other than "relicense all
>>>> of Postgres as GPL" will make them happy.
>>> Which, by the way, *no one* has the authority to do.
>> Right. So the long term solution in my mind is to migrate away from
>> readline and towards libedit. I'm just not sufficiently worried about
>> this to put any of my own cycles into making libedit good enough.
> Agreed. If we can create a database, someone can get libedit to work
> 100%! There is no excuse for this not being done, seeing that
> libreadline has been (viral) GPL forever and has changed APIs regularly
> and broken things for us. Even going with GNUTLS does not help us with
> that.
>
> Can someone take ownership of this, get involved with the libedit folks,
> get Debian to use their fixes, and solve this problem for us?

You're assuming a fact not in evidence, namely the existence of an
identifiable group of "libedit folks". Last time I looked there was no
such group.

I'm not greatly in favor of encouraging people to spend lots of time on
this. If they have cycles to spend I'd rather they spent them on
Postgres features, rather than a project we'd probably end up owning
forever.

(And we shouldn't assume that GnuTLS is the right replacement for
OpenSSL either, BTW).

cheers

andrew