From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
To: Rod Taylor <pg@rbt.ca>
Subject: Re: Promoting PostgreSQL to the world.
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 22:47:54 +0200
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Cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>,
	"pgsql-www@postgresql.org" <pgsql-www@postgresql.org>
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	<1083270087.30065.408.camel@jester>
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Rod Taylor wrote:
> I think that is different though. They're simply redistributing
> exactly what we gave them (compiled, but still the same).

Except that there is a 452 kB diff file that comes along with it.

> We already have issues with users adding patches to the database,
> like CONNECT BY, which have a number of bugs. If Debian applied those
> patches by default and a flood of Debian users started complaining
> about our buggy software what would we do? If it would be to tell
> them they're not using an official release, then it shouldn't have
> the PostgreSQL name on it.

You can check the archives for what we have done in the past, because 
there have been exactly analogous cases already.  But I would think 
that if the postgresql package had to be renamed we would have even 
more traffic about that, so it's not necessarily an improvement.

If you consider the state of free operating system distributions (not 
only Linux) today, then it's obvious that if all packages had 
restrictions like you propose, then nothing could get distributed 
anymore under a recognizable name, which would quickly end up being the 
suicide of the free software community.