Обсуждение: typo in the license ?
Greetings from pgconf eu 2025 , Riga, Latvia!
While attending Karen Sandler's presentation on : The Foundation of Open Source: Why Software Freedom? , I just looked up the license here :
https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/ and then here : https://opensource.org/license/postgresql
the variable $ORGANIZATION is spelled as ORGANIZATION and further below as ORGANISATION.
thanks
On 10/22/25 00:44, Achilleas Mantzios wrote: > Greetings from pgconf eu 2025 , Riga, Latvia! > > While attending Karen Sandler's presentation on : The Foundation of Open > Source: Why Software Freedom? , I just looked up the license here : > > https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/ and then here : https:// > opensource.org/license/postgresql > > the variable $ORGANIZATION is spelled as ORGANIZATION and further below > as ORGANISATION. 1) See here: https://quillbot.com/blog/uk-vs-us/organisation-vs-organization/ So not really a typo, just inconsistent. 2) This will probably need to be brought up with OSI. > > thanks > -- Adrian Klaver adrian.klaver@aklaver.com
On 2025-Oct-22, Achilleas Mantzios wrote: > Greetings from pgconf eu 2025 , Riga, Latvia! > > While attending Karen Sandler's presentation on : The Foundation of Open > Source: Why Software Freedom? , I just looked up the license here : > > https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/ and then here : > https://opensource.org/license/postgresql > > the variable $ORGANIZATION is spelled as ORGANIZATION and further below > as ORGANISATION. Yes, but: 1. this is a problem in the OSI website, not in the Postgres website or licensing file. 2. note that this file is not a license, but a license template. If you want to use this license, you're supposed to replace those keywords with the name of your organization. I would think that if you use the template and replace $ORGANIZATION with a name but fail to replace $ORGANISATION with the same name, then your lawyer is not worth very much. -- Álvaro Herrera PostgreSQL Developer — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/ "La primera ley de las demostraciones en vivo es: no trate de usar el sistema. Escriba un guión que no toque nada para no causar daños." (Jakob Nielsen)
On 2025-Oct-22, Álvaro Herrera wrote: > 2. note that this file is not a license, but a license template. If you > want to use this license, you're supposed to replace those keywords with > the name of your organization. I would think that if you use the template > and replace $ORGANIZATION with a name but fail to replace $ORGANISATION > with the same name, then your lawyer is not worth very much. By the way, here's the email Dave sent to them: https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2009-November/000930.html Note he consistently used <ORGANISATION>; there were no dollar signs and there was no ORGANIZATION. So maybe OSI saw ORGANISATION and though "oh look, let's fix this typo", changed the first one, and then forgot to continue reading, because he got distracted changing the < > to dollar signs. Somebody joked downthread about Compaq acquiring Digital and failing to change some license text correctly, in pretty much the same way that OSI appears to have failed to Americanise the spelling of the Postgres license ... https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2009-November/000931.html The license was reported approved three months later: https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2010-February/thread.html -- Álvaro Herrera Breisgau, Deutschland — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/ "Hay que recordar que la existencia en el cosmos, y particularmente la elaboración de civilizaciones dentro de él no son, por desgracia, nada idílicas" (Ijon Tichy)