Re: Licensing

Robby Russell wrote:

>On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 09:48 +0100, Miroslav Šulc wrote:
>
>
>>Lance Obermeyer wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>MySQL is a commercial company that wants to sell licenses. Their open source offering licensed under something called the GPL (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php) which is in some ways quite complex. You or your client should consult an attorney to see whether your intended use meets its terms. Based on your response from the MySQL account rep, it sounds like your app would not be in compliance.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>If I understood MySQL licensing correctly, simply said, end user has two
>>choices:
>>
>>1) when using application that is licensed under GPL, he/she can use
>>MySQL for free
>>2) when using application under any other license (simplified), he/she
>>must pay for each MySQL installation
>>
>>
>>
>
>I don't think that this is completely accurate. For instance, PHP is
>licensed under the PHP license, not GPL. So, according to your
>statement, you cannot use any of the PHP Pear libraries (which are
>typically PHP license) without a license from MySQL?
>
>
That was the simplification :-) There is an exception for PHP (and also
FOSS exception). If I remember it well, the app must be distributed
under GPL license or PHP license version 3.0 to be able to use the MySQL
for free. As you can see, PHP 5 doesn't contain MySQL extension compiled
in by default, but PHP 4 did. This change may be caused by the change of
MySQL license. You can see it here
http://cz2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mysql.php and here
http://cz2.php.net/manual/en/faq.databases.php#faq.databases.mysql.php5.

Detail MySQL licensing information can be found here
http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/opensource-license.html and
here http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/commercial-license.html.

I'm no longer interested in the MySQL licenses because I've already made
my decision. I think that PostgreSQL license is much better (and much
more cleaner) and most people will sleep much better when using
PostgreSQL instead of MySQL ;-)

>-Robby
>
>
Miroslav Šulc