Re: [HACKERS] Readline use in trouble?

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Tom Lane wrote:

> If we were really doing this with full legal care, we'd probably have
> something like this in every source file:
>
> * Copyright (c) 1986-1994
> * The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
> * Copyright (c) 1996-1999
> * PostgreSQL Global Development Team

That's what I thought. Perhaps one should also add to the actual copyright
notice, that, besides that U of C, no member of the PostgreSQL Global
Development Team will assume any liability for nuttin', etc.

> Now a lawyer would immediately point out that the "PostgreSQL Global
> Development Team" is not a legally existent entity and so has no ability
> to sue anyone for copyright violation. If we thought we might have to
> enforce our wishes legally, we'd need to form an actual corporation.
> (Perhaps the core team has already quietly done that, but I sure don't
> know about it...)

What about Pgsql, Inc.? Perhaps they should trademark the product name and
act as the legal guardian. Isn't that sort of what the Apache Software
Foundation does?

Of course, I don't recall the project being in legal trouble lately, but
who knows how fast it can happen. The FSF could get anal, or [commercial
db vendor] files senseless claims, or [joe idiot] trademarks "PostgreSQL",
etc. Once you're in the spotlight, the weirdos come out. And we want to be
in the spotlight, don't we?

-Peter

--
Peter Eisentraut Sernanders vaeg 10:115
peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net 75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/ Sweden