Christopher Browne wrote: 
In the last exciting episode, Randolf Richardson <rr@8x.ca> wrote:
  
    	Of course I'll attempt to get an official response from the
legal department of such a company before jumping to any
conclusions.  In the case of MySQL, if I wanted to develop a project
that was not open source and didn't comply with the GPL, I'd send a
letter (or eMail) to MySQL and ask for clarity on what my
obligations would be with regards to their licensing and my product
(and would also include a general outline of how my product will use
MySQL).
    

I'm reasonably sure that their answer would point you to the "brief
description," namely:

  "This is our licensing policy in brief: Our software is 100% GPL,
  and if yours is also 100% GPL (or OSI compliant), then you never
  have to pay us for the licences. In all other instances, you are
  better served by our commercial licence."

Their "licensing page" says it quite explicitly:

  "To anyone in doubt, we recommend the commercial licence. It is
   never wrong."

Which gives the pretty clear underlying message:

It's not really "open source" or "free software;" to anyone in doubt,
reality is that it's traditionally-licensed commercial software, at
several hundred dollars a pop.

I can't see them being particularly interested in giving explanations
that would lead to people _not_ sending in a cheque...
A few quotes with links:

http://www.mysql.com/products/licensing-examples.html

<quote>You need a license if you sell a product designed specifically for use with MySQL or that requires the MySQL server to function at all. This is true whether or not you provide MySQL for your client as part of your product distribution.</quote>

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2003-09/msg01400.php

<guote>"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."

Sometimes people say "But I cannot open source my application!" and they may have valid reasons for this. Our response is then: "If you have a valid reason not to be open source, wouldn't that same reasoning apply to us?".

This goes to the core of MySQL AB's business idea of Quid pro Quo - if you are open source, we are open source - if you are closed source, we are commercial.</quote>

Doesn't leave open much questions imho.

Kaarel