Quoting No Spam ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > A short while back in May, MySQL submitted its FLOSS License Exception > for comments. > > http://zak.greant.com:8888/licensing/getfile/licensing/FLOSS-exception.txt?v=1.4 > > I'm surely missing something not having legal training, but what is > the net effect of that?
MySQL used to be under LGPL. This is a licence exception designed to fix some licence incompatibilities accidentally introduced by the project's shift to GPL. > Term 0 says "you are free to distribute Derivative Works... without > affecting license terms of the works", but subterm a says "you obey > the GNU General Public License in all respects for ... the Derivative > Work". You are free to distribute Derivative Works [...] without affecting the license terms of the works, as long as: [...] a. You obey the GNU General Public License in all respects for the Program and the Derivative Work, except for identifiable sections of that work which are not derived from the Program, and which can reasonably be considered independent and separate works in themselves, Aside: The wording reflects a bit of management brain damage: No use of a third-party codebase in a derivative work can "affect the licence terms of the work". Licensing is under the control of the copyright owner. If you don't own the code, you cannot affect its licensing. The most you can do is create a derivative work that, on account of licensing conflict, cannot be lawfully distributed (because that would violate the third party's copyright, or someone's, at any rate). > Do I interpret this correctly as: if I combine my BSD code with MySQL, > I can keep the BSD license I have, but I have to follow GPL terms > including reciprocating for my BSD code? No, that is not what it says. It says (rather clumsily) that if your code is reasonably independent, isn't derived from MySQL, and is under one of the licences listed in section 1, then you may use it in a derivative work with MySQL, despite MySQL being otherwise subject to GPL terms of use. Essentially, they're trying to retrofit via a licence exception some of the licence semantics of LGPL. > i.e. my code may not be de jure GPL, but it is de facto GPL? No. -- Cheers, "I used to be on the border of insanity. However, due Rick Moen to pressing political concerns, I recently had to invade." [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Kurt Montandon, in r.a.sf.w.r-j -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3