Re: Problem with recent PostgreSQL relatedpressrelease

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 04:23:04PM -0500, Jim Nasby wrote:

> companies, and part of that is discussing what people's expectations
> are of companies that are making use of our open-source technology.

The communitiy's opinion on that is, I think, clear.  It's in the
license.  And that says, "Do what you want, just don't sue us and
don't change copyright on the code."  Add on -- and sell (as closed
source if you like, or as GPL if you like, or as
your-new-needless-license-here if you like) -- Dynatune, Replicator,
Bob's PostgreSQL Uncle, or whatever.  It's a good thing if people
take this excellent community resource, and make it better in this or
that way.

I would personally _prefer_ that such enhancements be released to the
community under the same terms as PostgreSQL is, but I have a clear
(and much deeper than I really want) understanding of why that's not
always possible or desirable.  That is part of the marvellous
flexibility of the BSD license, and of the model where no one company
or membership-based group has some sort of lock on what you can do
with the basic functionality.  This way has worked well for
PostgreSQL in much the way it has worked well for the Internet.  I
take the continuing successes of each to be empirical evidence that
the model works.

The original complaint, as far as I could tell, was to do with how
community members were _talking_ about the community's code.  As far
as I can see, that issue is completely closed, because several people
who are in a position to speak for EnterpriseDB have said what they
want to change in the way they phrase their message.  Having been on
both sides of the pointy-hair-enabling desk, I also have a perfectly
good idea of how the best of intentions in sending out a message can
get turned into something that annoys one's allies.  I think we
should all just chalk this whole thing up to a simple
misunderstanding and move on.  (And, not incidentally, stop trying to
manage various companies' business communications or
revenue-generating schemes.)

--
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
The fact that technology doesn't work is no bar to success in the marketplace.
        --Philip Greenspun