From: Paul Ramsey Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:03:20 +0000 (+0000) Subject: FAQ about licensing (#1262) X-Git-Tag: 2.0.0alpha3~23 X-Git-Url: https://granicus.if.org/sourcecode?a=commitdiff_plain;h=52a51f5189899311badc75d0e1d0f3c2ecfb890e;p=postgis FAQ about licensing (#1262) git-svn-id: http://svn.osgeo.org/postgis/trunk@8976 b70326c6-7e19-0410-871a-916f4a2858ee --- diff --git a/doc/faq.xml b/doc/faq.xml index 5e253ff36..f39e58ac2 100644 --- a/doc/faq.xml +++ b/doc/faq.xml @@ -360,4 +360,17 @@ WHERE ST_DWithin(geocolumn, 'POINT(1000 1000)', 100.0); + + + + I am releasing software that uses PostGIS, does that mean my software has to be licensed using the GPL like PostGIS? Will I have to publish all my code if I use PostGIS? + + + + Almost certainly not. As an example, consider Oracle database running on Linux. Linux is GPL, Oracle is not, does Oracle running on Linux have to be distributed using the GPL? No. So your software can use a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database as much as it wants and be under any license you like. + The only exception would be if you made changes to the PostGIS source code, and distributed your changed version of PostGIS. In that case you would have to share the code of your changed PostGIS (but not the code of applications running on top of it). Even in this limited case, you would still only have to distribute source code to people you distributed binaries to. The GPL does not require that you publish your source code, only that you share it with people you give binaries to. + + + + \ No newline at end of file