Re: Oracle indemnifies PostgreSQL on its patents

["Luke Lonergan" <LLonergan(at)greenplum(dot)com>]

Title: Re: [HACKERS] Oracle indemnifies PostgreSQL on its patents

This may have the nice side effect of pushing 'possibly patented' technologies into the FOSS realm, but again I wonder what the duration/persistence of Oracle's committment is?

I think I will ask our lawyers to review this.

- Luke

Msg is shrt cuz m on ma treo

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Tom Lane [mailto:tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us]
Sent:   Saturday, March 31, 2007 02:55 PM Eastern Standard Time
To:     Alvaro Herrera
Cc:     Luke Lonergan; Bruce Momjian; PostgreSQL-development
Subject:        Re: [HACKERS] Oracle indemnifies PostgreSQL on its patents

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> I would be worried if I were you (or Joshua Drake for that matter): does
> the agreement apply to commercial companies deriving products from
> PostgreSQL as well?

Interesting point.  It's doubtless unwise to take this press release as
being an accurate guide to the terms of the license, but what it says
is

: According to the terms of the OIN license, the components covered by
: the agreement include not only the Linux kernel and associated GNU
: applications, but also other open source projects included in Linux
: distributions.

which to me says you're covered as long as your code is commonly
included in Linux distributions.  Hence, proprietary derivatives
would *not* be covered.  I'd guess that Oracle would have a hard
time suing for any patent violation embedded in the freely
distributed Postgres code, but any technique appearing only in
the proprietary extension would still be at risk.

IANAL, etc.  I assume that EDB and Greenplum will have their
lawyers scrutinizing this deal on Monday morning ;-) ... I'd
be interested to hear what the experts' conclusion is.

                        regards, tom lane