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
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