Re: About GPL and proprietary software

From: Jan Wieck <JanWieck(at)Yahoo(dot)com>
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us>
Cc: Jan Wieck <JanWieck(at)Yahoo(dot)com>, Kaarel <kaarel(at)future(dot)ee>, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne(at)acm(dot)org>, pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org, Marten G Mickos <marten(at)mysql(dot)com>
Subject: Re: About GPL and proprietary software
Date: 2003-09-25 13:36:41
Message-ID: 3F72EF69.7050602@Yahoo.com
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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Jan Wieck wrote:
>> > "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."
>
> In this case, it is almost saying that if the application requires
> MySQL, it has to be commercial, even if you don't distribute MySQL and
> expect it to be part of the operating system --- again, reach as far
> with the GPL as we can.

Moreover, the term "another OSI-approved and MySQL-approved" reduces
effectively to nothing. Imagine we would change some small details in
PostgreSQL like storing the system catalog in a MySQL database. We
continue to ship PostgreSQL under BSD, but it now requires MySQL. As
long as you use PostgreSQL in a GPL conformant context, that's probably
fine, but effectively all the freedom of our BSD license is gone because
you can't do anything else with it any more.

Jan

--
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