> I would like to comment on the following mysql.com question
>
> "We have made our product available at zero price under the GNU
> General Public Licence (GPL), and we also sell it under a commercial
> licence to those who do not wish to be bound by the terms of the GPL."
>
> Out of curiosity, how does the second statement
> not violate the GNU GPL?
Because MySQL AB is *not* bound by the GPL. They
*own* the code and are granting *you* a license,
and that particular license puts some limits
on what *you* may do.
> It seems like the GPL
> can be bypassed by keeping two identical copies
> of the source code, one under the GNU GPL bundled
> with the GNU licence file called COPYING, and
> another bundled with a proprietary license file.
> Since the two source files can be considered as
> being updated separately the two licenses can
> be kept alive concurrently. This approach which
> as I see it is perfactly legal (as long as it
> is made clear which is the GPL'd release and
> which is the proprietary release on the download
> section of the mysqld.com web site) can lead
> to forking.
Yes and no. There is no need to keep two identical
copies. Again: MySQL AB are not bound by the license,
and may do whatever they wish with the code. For that
matter, they are perfectly free to suddenly stop
GPL'ing the source code and switch to distributing
only proprietary sources (which cannot prevent anyone
from using already released GPL distros)
> In particular, contributions made
> to the GPL'd source code cannot be applied to
> the proprietary source code unless the contributor
> explicitly states that the contribution goes
> to both the GPL'd software release and the
> proprietary source code simultaneously.
Which is why MySQL AB requires you to hand over
the copyright of the contribution before they
accept it.
The rest of your mail is based on some misconceptions
regarding copyrigt and licensing, as explained
above.
/ Carsten
--
Carsten H. Pedersen
keeper and maintainer of the bitbybit.dk MySQL FAQ
http://www.bitbybit.dk/mysqlfaq
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