From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: David Fetter <david@fetter.org>
cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>,
 Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@enterprisedb.com>,
 Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@gmail.com>,
 Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>,
 Pg Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Making tab-complete.c easier to maintain
In-reply-to: <20151022232610.GC22539@fetter.org>
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Comments: In-reply-to David Fetter <david@fetter.org>
 message dated "Thu, 22 Oct 2015 16:26:10 -0700"
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 17:02:14 -0700
Message-ID: <54565.1445558534@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Sender: pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org

David Fetter <david@fetter.org> writes:
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 04:05:06PM -0700, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Given the license issues around GNU readline, requiring it seems like
>> probably a non-starter.

> I should have made this more clear.  I am not an IP attorney and don't
> play one on TV, but this is what I've gotten out of conversations with
> IP attorneys on this subject:

I'm not an IP attorney either, and the ones I've talked to seem to agree
with you.  (Red Hat's corporate attorneys, at least, certainly thought
that when I last asked them.)  But the observed facts are that some
distros refuse to ship psql-linked-to-readline, and substitute libedit
instead, because they got different advice from their attorneys.

If we desupport libedit, the end result is going to be these distros
shipping psql with no command-line-editing support at all.  Our opinion,
or even our lawyers' opinion, is unlikely to prevent that outcome.

While libedit certainly has got its bugs and deficiencies, it's way better
than nothing at all, so I think we'd better keep supporting it.

			regards, tom lane


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