Legacy approval request - BSD license (PostgreSQL variant)

[Dave Page]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 1:56 AM, Matthew Flaschen
<matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:
> Richard Fontana wrote:
>> On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:03:42 +0100
>> Dave Page <dpage at pgadmin.org> wrote:
>>
>>> The PostgreSQL project (http://www.postgresql.org/) originates from
>>> Michael Stonebraker's database group at UC Berkeley. The project began
>>> in 1986, and was released by the Regents of the University of
>>> California in 1996 under a variant of their BSD licence, a copy of
>>> which is attached to this message.
>>
>> This seems to be a close variation on a template license that is already
>> listed by OSI as an OSI-approved license, which OSI calls "Historical
>> Permission Notice and Disclaimer". It is stated here
>> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/historical.php
>> that "This License has been voluntarily deprecated by its author." (I'd
>> be curious to know who claimed to be the author of that license.)
>
> It is a close variation, but doesn't match, even with that license's
> numerous optional clauses.  This is unfortunately quite typical of
> permissive licenses.  The shorter the license, the more people seem
> inclined to modify it for their own use.
>
> That said, it should be approved, because it's OSD-compliant, and the
> OSI has generally been willing to approve redundant permissive licenses
> when they're actually being used.

Given the brief discussion on our licence, it seems clear that the
main issue is our description of it as a BSD derivative, which despite
its origins it does not appear to be. If that is an issue for the
committee, perhaps it can simply be approved as 'The PostgreSQL
Licence'?

So what is the next step, now that the request for review is over 30
days old? Do I need to do anything else in order to allow the process
to proceed?

Regards, Dave.

-- 
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
PGDay.EU 2009 Conference: http://2009.pgday.eu/start