Re: About GPL and proprietary software

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, Tom Lane wrote:

> Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> writes:
> > Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> >> [ lots of stuff about the GPL ]
>
> Look, guys, this is way off topic for the Postgres lists. Postgres is
> not a GPL project and will never be one. If you want to engage in
> either defending or bashing the GPL, take it someplace else. Please.
>
> regards, tom lane

<IANAL>
I subscribe to this. The point here is a comparison between licences,
whatever they are. Any discussion involving FSF is off-topic, since
AFAIK people at FSF have no rights over either MySQL or PostgreSQL code.
What _they_ think about what the wording of GPL means is totally
irrelevant, because they released no MySQL or PostgreSQL code, ever.

The only things that matter here are:
1) BSD licence of PostgreSQL, and _only_ in the way PostgreSQL authors
interpret it. After all, the wording of it is just an expression
of the authors' intent.
2) the licence of MySQL, and again, _only_ in the way they take it.

The comparison may be interesting, and definitely on topic.

The key point being:
when I (the author) release the software "X" under licence "L",
people having doubts about the meaning of "L" should ask me, and
I'll make clear what my intent is. Asking the authors of another
software, even they happened to use the same wording of "L" for
their licence, is useless. What they mean with "L" for their sw
is irrelevant.

I think MySQL people made their intent clear. We may discuss
whether their licence is a "real GPL" or not, and FSF people may
argue they shouldn't claim their sw is GPLed, but this discussion
does not belong here, but on GPL and MySQL lists.

Someone may think that MySQL licence (call it GPL or not, it's still
MySQL licence) is too restrictive for him, and turn to look at
PostgreSQL and wonder what the advantages of PostgreSQL licence are
(again, call it BSD or not, it's still PostgreSQL licence). _That_
would be an interesting discussion.
</IANAL>

.TM.
--
____/ ____/ /
/ / / Marco Colombo
___/ ___ / / Technical Manager
/ / / ESI s.r.l.
_____/ _____/ _/ Colombo(at)ESI(dot)it