Re: PostGIS in a commercial project

Il 24/10/11 12:19, Pavel Stehule ha scritto:
> 2011/10/24 Edoardo Panfili<edoardo(at)aspix(dot)it>:
>> Il 24/10/11 10:03, Pavel Stehule ha scritto:
>>>
>>> 2011/10/24 Thomas Kellerer<spam_eater(at)gmx(dot)net>:
>>>>
>>>> Eduardo Morras, 21.10.2011 20:53:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Now PostGIS is licensed under the GPL and I wonder if we can use it
>>>>>> in a commercial (customer specific) project then. The source code
>>>>>> will not be made open source, but of course the customer will get
>>>>>> the source code.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is it still OK to use the GPL licensed PostGIS in this case? Is
>>>>>> that then considered a derivative work because the application will
>>>>>> not work without PostGIS?
>>>>>
>>>>> If it's pure GPL, then postgresql is automagically relicenced to GPL,
>>>>> because postgresql allows relicencing and GPL force it to be GPL.
>>>>> Your source code must be in GPL too. Remember, it's a virus licence
>>>>> and has the same problem that Midas king had.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the answer.
>>>>
>>>> I think we'll better be safe than sorry and we will not use PostGIS then.
>>>
>>> It doesn't mean, so you must to publish your source code on net. Your
>>> codes have to be available to your customers. That is all. You can
>>> distribute your product as service, and then you don't need to show
>>> your codes.
>>>
>>
>> I am developing a web system that uses postgres and postgis, my source code
>> is released under Apache2 licence (The customers has a copy of the whole
>> source reposotory). The server interacts using jdbc and a C function for
>> postgres. The client (java) interacts only with my server application.
>>
>> I think that this is safe, I'm doing wrong?
>> My software has to use the GPL? if I can I'd like to use Apache2 licence for
>> my source code.
>
> there is not clean who is customer and what is one unit. If you
> distribute PostGIS inside your application as one unit to customer,
> then your application should to use GPL.

Customer: a research group that uses a server application to store data
plus a client application (pure java) that exchanges data with server
application (not directly with postgres).

I do not distribute postgres nor postgis inside my application. The
customer installs postgres, postigis and then install my application
(inside tomcat) and create the db. Other people downloads a java
application that exchanges data with my application.

Is not so easy manage licences (even though I read it)
Postgres uses licence similar to BDS
PostGIS uses GPL
Tomcat uses Apache2
...and an application usually uses othe libraries.

But at the end my software does not use the source code of postgis (but
uses postgres include files for a C function).

Regard
Edoardo