Bruce,
> Having contributors bought out was always one of our three risks, the
> other two being patent and trademark attacks. Not sure what we can
> really do about them.
Actually, the potential for trademark attacks is minimal to nonexistant
according to the attorney's report. So I'm not worrying about it.
Patent attacks are no more a risk for us than they are for every other OSS
project, and the answer for these is to support the anti-patent
organizations.
Overall, I think we're in a good position in that there are a lot of
attacks which could *hurt* PostgreSQL, but none which are a guarenteed
kill, and the public knowledge of an attack could easily cause our users
and enemies of the attacker, and the OSS legal community, to rally to our
defense and support. This makes any attack a risky proposition for the
attacker.
Our #1 best defense is to make sure that as many companies as possible have
invested in making PostgreSQL an integral part of their infrastructure
and/or product line.
--
--Josh
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco