From: Paul Ramsey Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2017 20:14:06 +0000 (+0000) Subject: #3606, CGAL/SFCGAL/PostGIS License Implications Clarification Documentation X-Git-Tag: 2.4.0rc1~58 X-Git-Url: https://granicus.if.org/sourcecode?a=commitdiff_plain;h=5c139ee5f8a0b2ea93a9dd6766018a1b3c78239b;p=postgis #3606, CGAL/SFCGAL/PostGIS License Implications Clarification Documentation git-svn-id: http://svn.osgeo.org/postgis/trunk@15642 b70326c6-7e19-0410-871a-916f4a2858ee --- diff --git a/doc/faq.xml b/doc/faq.xml index 3c1cad9fa..4b66f1a7d 100644 --- a/doc/faq.xml +++ b/doc/faq.xml @@ -398,8 +398,9 @@ WHERE ST_DWithin(geocolumn, 'POINT(1000 1000)', 100.0); - 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. + 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. Similarly 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. + The above remains true even if you use PostGIS in conjunction with the optional CGAL-enabled functions. Portions of CGAL are GPL, but so is all of PostGIS already: using CGAL does not make PostGIS any more GPL than it was to start with.