License Committee Report for December 2009

[Dave Page]

Hello? Anyone? Please? :-)

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Dave Page <dpage at pgadmin.org> wrote:
> Any progress on this yet?
>
> Regards, Dave.
>
> On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 3:56 AM, Russ Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
>> Okay, I'll pass that on to the board.  Oh, wait, you just did.  Well,
>> anyway, now we know that you considered it, tried it, and it didn't
>> work.
>>
>> Dave Page writes:
>>  > On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 11:02 PM, Russ Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
>>  > > Dave Page writes:
>>  > >  > Where can I find out the result of this submission?
>>  > >
>>  > > Hi, Dave, sorry for not getting back to you.  I was away in India
>>  > > during this board meeting, and didn't convey the board's decision to
>>  > > you.  The board wishes to know if you have considered relicensing
>>  > > under the MIT License?  If you construe your work as a collective
>>  > > copyright of all contributors, then any copyright holder is free to
>>  > > license under any terms as long as they compensate all other copyright
>>  > > holders.  In the open source world, relicensing from your license to
>>  > > the MIT license is a change of no effect, so no compensation would be
>>  > > due.
>>  >
>>  > Hi Russ,
>>  >
>>  > As I understand it (based on advice from SFLC about a year ago in
>>  > relation to a different project), we wouldn't be able to claim
>>  > collective copyright as we inherited the original code and licence
>>  > from UC Berkeley. It was only appropriate for the other project
>>  > because from day one, all code was attributed to the defined group
>>  > that made up the project team - and even then, we were advised to get
>>  > explicit permission to relicence from all contributors and to avoid
>>  > relying on collective copyright. A large part of the reason for that
>>  > was that we had a German developer who disagreed with the change, and
>>  > German law does not allow individual contributors to relicence.
>>  >
>>  > Regardless of that however, the project's core team has previously
>>  > discussed and rejected any change of licence.
>>  >
>>  > --
>>  > Dave Page
>>  > PostgreSQL Core Team
>



-- 
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com