On Sun, Dec 03, 2000 at 05:17:36PM -0500, mlw wrote:
> ... if I write code which is dependent on
> the open source work of others, then hell yes, that work should also be
> open source. That, to me, is the difference between right and wrong.
This is short and I will say no more:
The entire social contract around PostgreSQL is written down in the
license. Those who have contributed to the project (are presumed to)
have read it and agreed to it before submitting their changes. Some
people have contributed intending someday to fold the resulting code
base into their proprietary product, and carefully checked to ensure
the license would allow it. Nobody has any legal or moral right to
impose extra use restrictions, on their own code or (especially!) on
anybody else's.
If you would like to place additional restrictions on your own
contributions, you can:
1. Work on other projects. (Adabas will soon be GPL, but you can start now. Others are coming, too.) There's
alwaysplenty of work to be done on Free Software.
2. Fork the source base, add your code, and release the whole thing under GPL. You can even fold in changes from the
originalproject, later. (Don't expect everybody to get along, afterward.) A less drastic alternative is to release
GPL'dpatches.
3. Grin and bear it. Greed is a sin, but so is envy.
Flame wars about licensing mainly distract people from writing code.
How would *you* like the time spent?
Nathan Myers
ncm@zembu.com