Re: About GPL and proprietary software

On Tuesday 23 September 2003 12:11, Dennis Gearon wrote:
> Well,
> I think it's a gift horse, this mysql thing. Postgres will certainly
> benefit.
>

well, even if PostgreSQL benefits, I don't think mysql loses much. The people
most likely to leave them are folks building commercial apps who are
unwilling to pay thier reletivly small commercial fee. This isn't thier
target market for either the commercial or libre versions of mysql, and
actually those are the types of people most GPL advocates are primarily
working against.

> The mysql people should make a two level product, featurewise and
> all, if the want to maintain their userbase. The lower level doesn't
> need the fancy license and fees, the upper one does. An example of this
> is various permutations and enhancements to the Zend PHP engine.
>

i could go either way here, but I think MySQL and MaxSQL (sapdb-max or
whatever it is) might just fill that role.

Robert Treat

> Robert Treat wrote:
> >right, but thats not what he said.
> >
> >>>>"Your PHP app that requires MySQL, if distributed, will either have
> >>>>to be GPL (or another OSI-approved and MySQL-approved open source
> >>>>licence ) or you will need a commercial licence of MySQL."
> >
> >note the "if distributed", its key to the whole thing. if your just
> >distributing php code then all is well and good, but if your
> >distributing php code and mysql, then you gotta pay up.
> >
> >Robert Treat
> >
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