On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:06 PM, <charles.mcdev...@emc.com> wrote: > The GNU people will never be 100% satisfied by anything you do to psql, other > than making it GPL. > Readline is specifically licensed in a way to try to force this (but many > disagree with their ability to force this).
This is just libelous FUD. There's absolutely no reason postgres would have to be GPL'd to satisfy any library license. In fact doing so would make the problem worse, not better since then the license on Postgres itself would (allegedly) conflict with the OpenSSL license. There's no question that the resulting binary when linked with readline is covered by the GPL including shipping source code etc. This is non-controversial and the original intent of licensing readline under the GPL. This isn't the same question as GIMP plugins or code using GMP which are themselves functionally dependent on the GPL'd code and some claim are therefore derivative works. I don't think anyone would claim that Postges is a derivative work of readline. The only question here is whether the OpenSSL license imposes requirements which cannot be met at the same time as the GPL requirements. The rest of Postgres itself doesn't conflict but if you're distributing a binary then you're covered by all the licenses of the code you include and depend on (the last part is somewhat controversial but irrelevant to this topic since OpenSSL headers are already included). So if the OpenSSL license imposes restrictions that the GPL bars then the resulting binary is not distributable. I suspect RedHat may have determined that the OpenSSL license requirements are not in fact mutually exclusive with the GPL either because they're not enforceable at all in the US anyways or because the way they read them they can be satisfied without violating the GPL. It's also possible they just decided it's unlikely the OpenSSL people would ever sue or the damages would be negligable. Of course this is all speculation. -- greg -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
