Re: How can we submit code patches that implement our (pending)patents? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On 2018-07-07 19:37:45 +0200, David Fetter wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 07, 2018 at 10:20:35AM -0700, Andres Freund wrote:
> > Hi,
> > On 2018-07-07 19:12:58 +0200, David Fetter wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 05, 2018 at 01:15:15AM +0000, Tsunakawa, Takayuki wrote:
> > > > I believe that accepting patented code from companies would be
> > > > practically more useful for PostgreSQL enhancement and growth.
> > > > PostgreSQL is now a mature software, and it can be more
> > > > corporate-friendly like other software under Apache License.
> > > 
> > > The Apache license is "friendly" to the patent holder, not so much to
> > > the aspiring maker of derivative proprietary software.
> > 
> > I don't think that's a true characterization.  There's no meaningful
> > reduction in freedoms to make derivative proprietary software in of
> > apache 2 vs BSD/MIT like licenses.  It gives you additional rights.  Are
> > you talking about the retaliatory clause? If so, that only cancel the
> > patent license, not the entire license.
> 
> There is according to IP attorneys I've spoken to on the matter, and
> this is frequently reflected in the open source policies companies
> have. For liberal licenses, which are enumerated and do not include
> the Apache license, the process is, as a rule, brief and perfunctory.
> For all other licenses, the process ranges from cumbersome to not
> worth doing.

You're talking about usage or contribution rules? I have a *very* hard
to belief this for the former. Note how vast amounts of recent widely
used open source projects are licensed under apache 2.0.  For the
latter, yes, it can be a bit more complicated: But usually only in the
cases where we *want* contributor's companies to make explicit IP policy
decisions anyway.


> > > We went with a very liberal license from the outset for what we
> > > believed were good reasons, and that's served us well over the
> > > decades.  If you're proposing a change of this magnitude, it's
> > > going to have to be a lot more convincing than, "it would be
> > > convenient for my company this year."
> > 
> > It's entirely possible to dual license contributions and everything.
> > Why are you making such aggressive statements about a, so far,
> > apparently good faith engagement?
> 
> We went out of our way to excise code that the PostgreSQL license
> doesn't cover some years back. I think that was done for good reasons,
> which obtain to this day. While the introduction of code someone else
> ultimately owns may seem harmless or even beneficial today, owners
> change, as do their motivations. When we have nothing of this kind in
> the project, we expose our future users to none of that risk.

I explicitly said *dual license*.  And we definitely have code that's
not just under the PG license, but compatibly licensed (mostly various
BSD licenses). We even have a few pices (just build-time) of solely GPL
licensed code (e.g. ax_pthread.m4).

Greetings,

Andres Freund