License Committee Report for December 2009

[Dave Page]

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