[Bizgres-general] Bizgres MPP and PostGIS

[Luke Lonergan]

Markus, Hannu,

On 9/21/06 2:49 AM, "Markus Schaber" <schabi at logix-tt.com> wrote:

> Hannu Krosing wrote:
> 
>> IANAL, but, as GPL is all about distribution, you have this problem only
>> if you want to distribute the result.
> 
> So, potential users have two possibilities:
> 
> - Distribute PostGIS as source, and compile it against Bizgres on the
> users site (given that the user has enough of the Bizgres source to
> compile against)
> 
> - Distribute the binaries that are compiled against a matching
> PostgreSQL, and load them into Bizgres. (I don't know whether this
> binary compatibility is given.)

The complication as I understand it is that Postgres goes through a patch
process to get the PostGIS functionality into it.  At that point, there is
PostGIS source code in the merged entity, which transfers the GPL
restrictions to the source.  At this point, any compiled product is subject
to those restrictions, which force the inclusion of the source code and the
inability to charge for the resulting binaries.

I think that this doesn't preclude an arrangement with the holder of the GPL
license for a special version that we could incorporate into Bizgres MPP.

We are interested in supporting PostGIS with MPP because the operations it
performs would likely benefit greatly from the parallelism of the MPP
kernel.  The main impediment so far has been our limited development
personnel - all are focused on features desired by our data warehousing
customers.

There are a couple of ways we can proceed if we have enough demand for
PostGIS MPP:
A) We can make a side arrangement with the PostGIS developers to support a
bundle, perhaps even have them do the porting work.
B) Perhaps we can perform a service that compiles the code for each PostGIS
MPP customer, places the source code in escrow and we charge an annual
maintenance fee.  I'm not sure if this is still compatible with GPL, but it
seems similar to RedHat and other's approaches.  The biggest difference is
that the source code is not made available to the general public as it is
with RedHat, but only to the support customers through the limited
conditions of an escrow.

Of these two, I far prefer (A).  Even better would be to have the PostGIS
people change their license to LGPL or BSD.

- Luke