Re: Patent warning about the Greenplum source code

Hi,

I don't really want to discuss patent issues publically.

On 2015-10-30 04:47:35 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> However, while the license defines and uses "Derivative Works", it does
> not mention that in the patent grant clause.  I assume this means that
> patent grants do not apply to derived works, meaning if code or ideas
> were moved from Greenplum to Postgres (which is not Apache 2.0
> licensed), it would not have a patent grant. I talked to Greenplum staff
> about this a few months ago and they did not dispute my analysis.

The easiest thing would be to dual-licensce the code such contributions
to postgres. That sounds quite possible to me.

> Therefore, I caution people from viewing the Greenplum source code as
> you might see patented ideas that could be later implemented in
> Postgres, opening Postgres up to increased patent violation problems.  I
> am also concerned about existing community members who work for
> Pivotal/Greenplum and therefore are required to view the patented source
> code.

Issues around this are much larger than patents. Any contribution done
under employment has such risks. That's why the kernel has the
signed-off-policy.

Check the section about signed-off-by in
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
and simpler
https://ltsi.linuxfoundation.org/developers/signed-process


Greetings,

Andres Freund