> Thomas Lockhart wrote:
> >
> > > This depends on the definition of open source; I think Netscape is
> > > OpenSource these days, but I doubt if anyone would be allowed to take the
> > > sources and create "Petscape: The Dog's Browser". But, as far as I know, I
> > > could go away tomorrow with the PostgreSQL sources and create "Mostgress",
> > > so long as I did not try to sell it. AFAIK, I might even get away with
> > > selling it, but it's not really the point.
> >
> > Yes you could. The original Postgres developers (or at least some of
> > them) did just that in founding Illustra. They sold the company a
> > couple of years later for $50M US to Informix.
>
> Actually Postgres was _not_ distributed under the BSD (do-whatever-you-want
> but
> give credit) license but a much more restrictive license that required a
> special
> permission from UBC to to anything non-educational.
>
> IIRC Stonebraker et al founded Illustra after getting special permissions from
> UCB
>
> The shift to BSD license (that enabled the current blooming of PostgreSQL ;)
> was oftained sometime during the development of postgres 95, with some
> considerable backing from Stonebraker.
>
Well, that's interesting.
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