Oh, one other thing.
The group that I work with at the one large company (call it company
"X") which Randy the MS rep was taking to lunch... is about to
upgrade some servers and spend somewhere around $250k on new MS SQL
server licenses. I'm not really sure why. (Oxygen deprivation could
explain it, except we seem to have plenty of oxgyen.) How can I
possibly explain to them that we can port all of these web apps to
MySQL or some other database (I don't care... MySQL is my first
choice but Postgres is very nice but we could use database ABC or
Wally's DB or use flat files written in Mandarin Chinese for all I
care) for less money than we will spend on software on one upgrade
cycle?
Does anyone else have similar experiences?
Douglas Sims
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Jun 7, 2006, at 11:15 PM, Douglas Sims wrote:
Ouch.
Thanks for the clarification. Two additional thoughts:
1) Does this apply (I think not) even if you don't compile with or
link with the MySQL database? If you just connect to it with ports
or sockets, as we usually do with web applications, you still don't
need a commercial license?
2) $595/year is still a lot cheaper than most of the alternatives
such as MS-SQL or Oracle.
I got into this debate with our Microsoft rep over lunch about a
year ago. My company does consulting with a couple of large (US
Fortune-500 companies) and unfortunately one of these is wedded to
MS. I work with MS-SQL quite a lot and generally find it inferior
to MySQL and as Randy (the MS rep) was talking how you really did
need to buy commercial licenses for MySQL, I pointed out that no
you really didn't for web applications. (He went on to point out
what great support MS SQL had - I quickly agreed and said that MS
SQL had the best support we could ever ask for... it's called
"Google." Randy still paid for the lunch :-)
Douglas Sims
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Jun 7, 2006, at 10:20 PM, mos wrote:
At 08:15 PM 6/7/2006, you wrote:
I believe that if you are only using MySQL for your company's
internal needs, whether from a web server or for deployment to other
company-owned locations, you don't need a commercial license. For
example, if your company owns fifiteen stores, you could set up a
MySQL-based point-of-sale system at each one without needing a
commercial license. You only need to release your source code if
you
release your compiled code.
Also, I believe the GPL requirement for sharing only applies if you
have modified MySQL's object code, i.e. compiled your code into
it or
it into your code or linked object code to it. If you are simply
installing it as a database and communicating to it through DBI or
ODBC or some other means which uses sockets or ports, you don't need
to release your code under the GPL.
Thus, you hardly ever need to purchase a commercial license.
Please note that this is just my understanding. I hope someone will
correct if I have misstated anything here.
Unfortunately that's not what MySQL AB licensing person told me.
The license is more strict than that. If your company distributes
an application that uses MySQL database inside the company (even
inside the same building), and you don't give the other dept the
source code (so it falls outside the gpl license) then the dept
receiving the application needs to have a MySQL license. In other
words, the complete application source code must follow the
application.
If you have a commercial application running in Windows, and
expect to sell a lot of applications, it will cost you $595 per
database server *per year*.
See https://shop.mysql.com/network.html?rz=s2. I didn't realize
myself it is now a per server/per year pricing either and it came
as quite a shock to me system. This can add up if you have a
thousand applications in circulation because each customer needs
to pay $595/year. If this is too pricey for you, there are open
source databases out there that are free to use and free to
distribute. FireBird and ProgreSQL come to mind. And there are
other commercial databases where you pay up front and have no
distribution fees whatsoever.
Mike
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