It's been a week since he wrote this (I've been busy with PHPCommunity.org), but Theo has written a nice testimonial about the problems developers are facing with MySQL's licensing.
Zak has been hosting an open license review recently. Hopefully good things will happen as a result. I encourage everyone to voice any concerns you have; MySQL AB seems very willing to listen and to try to resolve and/or clarify any legitimate concerns.
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bart on 2004-02-11T14:57:47
That link points nowhere... A little search on Google for "theo schlossnagle MySQL" brought up
this page (
archive)... is this what you were aiming at?
Thanks
shiflett on 2004-02-11T15:49:13
That will teach me to post at 3 AM. :-)
It's now fixed. Thanks.
That sounds fishy to me
phillup on 2004-02-11T19:42:56
MySQL's license doesn't says I can't write my own MySQL client library to log these things and distribute it with our product. However, the people at MySQL maintain their license (GPL) prohibits this. Something about the GPL applying to the use of the database and that any access of the database would violate the GPL. Last time I checked, the GPL is a copyright and they can't copyright an idea nor my work -- which leaves them out of luck. I think the real issue is the coding of the client library. IANAL, but it seems to me that if it is all clean code... it should be fine... from a legal perspective.
When you are not distributing any part of the MySQL system, you can use it for free. I know that I write some code w/ Delphi that connects to a MySQL database and have not bought a MySQL license. But, I don't know if Borland paid to have that ability.
I don't distribut the database, it is up to the client to get and set up their database and take care of any licensing issues.
My limited understanding of the GPL was that it could not limit how a product is used and that MySQL.com is, in this case (if the claims are true) trying to tie the licensing to how it is used. While they can certainly control
distribution of the mysql code, when included with commercial software... I don't think (remember... IANAL) that they can control how the software is used
in conjunction with a totally separate piece of commercial software.
