Steve Crawford wrote:
Bill Moran wrote:
In response to "Jonathan Tripathy" <jonnyt@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
I know the PostgreSQL licence is "based" on the BSD licence, however
the line which says "without fee" rings alarm bells, even though I
think it means that "you don't have ot pay anything to the PostgreSQL
developers" rather than "if you distribute, you must not charge a fee"
The "without fee" part means that you don't owe anyone a fee for doing
so.
We all know that, but the wording certainly is ambiguous and could be
interpreted either way. Reminds me of Ed Asner in the old "Remenber, you
can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor." nuke-plant retiree
sketch on "Saturday Night Live." (When he left, they argued about the
interpretation and eventually decided to drain the reactor. Final line
to waitress on the beach: "Remember, you can't stare too long at a
radiation cloud...")
It seems to me that ", without fee, and without a written agreement"
could be stripped out entirely.
But I am not a lawyer. And while there is no problem asking the question
here, if there is any actual money/liability on the line then relying on
legal advice from geeks is about as sensible as asking your attorney for
a custom kernel module. That goes for the whole stack of components in
your system, not just PostgreSQL which is about the least likely to
cause licensing problems.
In at least some jurisdictions, if one party to a contract writes the language
without input or emendation from the other party, that allows the other party
to impose any reasonable interpretation on the wording. IOW, ambiguity is
resolved in favor of the party who had no choice in the wording.
That would mean the licensee gets to determine what "without fee" means, not
the licensor.
--
Lew
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