Why? [LWN.net]

Why?

Posted Aug 27, 2003 16:37 UTC (Wed) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256)
In reply to: PostgreSQL, Inc. donates database replication software by gj
Parent article: PostgreSQL, Inc. donates database replication software

Why would GPL be better for PostgreSQL Inc. than BSD?

More importantly why would you nitpick on *their* choice?

What factors to you suppose the considered in making their decision?

Perhaps they want to feel free to create proprietary secondary derivatives
from this work (that is to say to create temporarily proprietary derivatives
from the first order derivatives that you or I might develop from these
sources). They are, after all, creating (temporarily) proprietary products.
Perhaps they use the BSD License because that's what the core PostgreSQL
code is released under; perhaps this is part of a tradition that dates back
to Postgres and Ingres, to Stonebreaker at the University of California at
Berkeley.

Perhaps people should think about the issues before posting knee-jerk
nit-picking drivel.

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Why?

Posted Aug 29, 2003 18:30 UTC (Fri) by admiyo (guest, #14580) [Link]

Actually, GPL would protect them better than BSD because they are the copyright owner.

With BSD, anyone can make a closed source version

With GPL, only the copyright owner can make a closed source version.

However, with BSD, they don't really have to chase down people that contribute a huge amount of code to get them to assign copyright back to Postgres, Inc. in order to legally release a closed source version.

Either way, this is good code.