Re: Debian readline/libedit breakage

Stephen Frost wrote:
-- Start of PGP signed section.
> * Bruce Momjian (bruce(at)momjian(dot)us) wrote:
> > I just posted on this. The risk is to people using the packages --- the
> > packages themselves include the source as an option, so they are fine,
> > but everyone using those packages would also be required to distribute
> > source, which is a restriction we have avoided in the past.
>
> I think you may want to reread the GPL on this. They're not actually
> required to distribute source *with* the binaries (hell, Debian
> doesn't..) as long as they are willing to produce it if asked. And
> that's the source for the binaries which actually depend on the GPL'd
> code, eg, the community-built psql binary that you're talking about
> here.. They don't have to provide source for everything on the CD or
> something (again, Debian has a "non-free" section also..).

In summary, our click-through installers and hopefully other packaged
versions of Postgres don't distribute libreadline and rely on the
OS-supplied version, which is a FSF exception. As I mentioned,
distributing the installer source doesn't exempt others from having to
GPL when they add to it (again, kind of rare because you can't link
something to psql, but anyway, it is mostly perception).

Debian distributes both Postgres and libreadline, so my guess is they
don't think they can use that exception and therefore have a problem.

And, again, libedit is not as hard as many of the problems we have
solved. Since we have grown strong, I would love to see us reaching out
to those satellite communities and helping them solve some of their
problems, though, as people pointed out, in a way that does not take
energy away from Postgres development.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +