On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 12:17 AM, Joachim Wieland <joe@mcknight.de> wrote:
> One question that I do not yet see answered is, do we risk violating a
> patent even if we just link against a compression library, for example
> liblzf, without shipping the actual code?
>
Generally patents are infringed on when the process is used. So
whether we link against or ship the code isn't really relevant. The
user using the software would need a patent license either way. We
want Postgres to be usable without being dependent on any copyright or
patent licenses.
Linking against as an option isn't nearly as bad since the user
compiling it can choose whether to include the restricted feature or
not. That's what we do with readline. However it's not nearly as
attractive when it restricts what file formats Postgres supports -- it
means someone might generate backup dump files that they later
discover they don't have a legal right to read and restore :(
--
greg