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Comment by xyzzy_plugh

9 months ago

> If you're using it internally though, there are no issues.

Unfortunately this advice is incompatible with that of most legal departments.

I get that this is your interpretation, by your interpretation doesn't have any value when it comes to possible IP issues.

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xyzzy_plugh

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levkk  9 months ago

No issues. PgDog is a company, email me if you want to use it internally and we'll work it out.

lev@pgdog.dev

  • robertlagrant  9 months ago

    Sorry to harp on this point that isn't fun performance engineering, but I think the tricky bit comes in exactly where you draw the line.

    Is offering Postgres-as-a-service with PgDog under the hood okay?

    What about a document-oriented, Firebase-equivalent that has PgDog and Postgres under the hood?

    What about a low-code application development platform?

    What about all of the above, but internal-facing vs paying-customer facing? Does it matter if the internal-facing is paid for via a cross-charge rate (e.g. a multinational company that charges divisions in other countries for services)?

    Does a customer of all of the above services have to AGPL their code and release it publically?

    Maybe it's all obvious, but that is the sort of thing I worry about with AGPL commercially. Even though I love OSS.

    • levkk  9 months ago

      Everything is fine. You never have to release your code for anything that's not PgDog itself. If you're running PgDog as a service, anyone who connects to it can ask you for the source code of PgDog. That's what AGPL says.

      In practice, if you use it internally, your teammates already have access to the code. Requirement fulfilled.

      Your databases run on a private net typically, so your customers can't connect to PgDog directly: AGPL doesn't apply. That's internal use.

      If you're running a DB cloud and using PgDog as a proxy, anyone who connects to it, i.e. your customers can ask for the code to PgDog. If you didn't modify it, just point them to my repo. Requirement fulfilled.

      If you did modify it, e.g. added some cool feature or fixed a bug, you'll have to show your clients what you did. That's real open source. That's how GPL was supposed to work. Code is free, and so is knowledge and our ability as humans (and now machines, lol!) to learn from it. GPL stopped working because we stopped shipping software on CDs. AGPL is it's modern version.

      I love open source and that's why I'm using AGPL. GPL and FSF is the reason why I can do what I do today: I learned from open code written by thousands of brilliant people who chose to share that with the world. Now it's my turn to give back.

      6 replies →

wredcoll  9 months ago

> Unfortunately this advice is incompatible with that of most legal departments.

I see this comment pop up every now and then on HN in specific, but I've never personally had a lawyer tell me this; is there any chance anyone could share an actual example of this?