On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 11:38:47AM -0500, Nico Williams wrote: > On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 11:55:01AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 11:40:41AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 08:19:35AM -0700, Andres Freund wrote: > > > > I'm fairly sure that I'm right. But my point isn't that we should "trust > > > > Andres implicitly ™" (although that's obviously not a bad starting point > > > > ;)). But rather, given that that is a reasonable assumption that such > > > > agreements are legally possible, we can decide whether we want to take > > > > advantage of such terms *assuming they are legally sound*. Then, if, and > > > > only if, we decide that that's interesting from a policy POV, we can > > > > verify those assumptions with lawyers. > > > > > > > > > > > Given we're far from the first project dealing with this, and that > > > > companies that have shown themselves to be reasonably trustworthy around > > > > open source, like Red Hat, assuming that such agreements are sound seems > > > > quite reasonable. > > > > > > Sun Microsystems seemed reasonably trustworthy too. > > > > I realize what you are saying is that at the time Red Hat wrote that, > > they had good intentions, but they might not be able to control its > > behavior in a bankruptcy, so didn't mention it. Also, Oracle is suing > > Google over the Java API: > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc. > > > > which I can't imagine Sun doing, but legally Oracle can now that they > > own Java via Sun. Of course, Sun might not have realized the problem, > > and Red Hat might have, but that's also assuming that there aren't other > > problems that Red Hat doesn't know about. > > That's not about patents though, is it.
No, it is not. It is just a case of not being able to trust any company's "good will". You only get what the contract says. > (I do believe that case is highly contrived. Sun put Java under the > GPL, so presumably Google can fork it under those terms. I've not > followed that case, so I don't really know what's up with it or why it > wasn't just dismissed with prejudice.) Yes, it is a big case with big ramifications if upheld. -- Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com + As you are, so once was I. As I am, so you will be. + + Ancient Roman grave inscription +