Actually, I think you are not quite right in all respects. but feel free to correct me if I am wrong....
Somebody, or some entity still needs to hold the copyright of a product. How that entity chooses to sell or distribute that product is up to them. In this case MySQL AB is the copyright holder. They have a fast, highly reliable product which meets the need of the majority of web-developers (and other developers). It is not as feature rich as, say Interbase or MSSQL Server. (I would love triggers and stored procedures, so that I can store business logic in the RDBMS) This is my interpretation (after clarification from MySQL, and www.mysql.com ), of MySQL's licence: If a product is inherrently tied to using MySQL, i.e. without MySQL it would need re-development, alteration, or would not work. And you are profiting from the sale of that product, then MySQL insist a license should be purchased. If the product is DB Agnostic or if the product is open-source and is distributed under GPL, then it doesn't need a license. Basically, if you profit from MySQL's work, they want a very modest fee for there effort (much cheaper then other traditionally commercially available RDBMS.) HTH, Richad >> I'm not here to slag MySQL, but this point is extremely interesting. >> Benjamin Pflugmann wrote: >> > Aehem. There seems to be some misconception here. Either your program >> > is fine with MySQL being GPL or not. >> > >> > If it is (and your forking example would work for you) either by using >> > MySQL in a way that your program is not required to be GPL'ed or by >> > GPL'ing your program, you need no commercial license from MySQL AB >> > either, and you can already distribute your program with MySQL without >> > the need of a fork or whatever. >> > >> > Or your program needs a commercial license, than forking MySQL would >> > not help, because you still have to adhere to the GPL. The only reason >> > MySQL AB can hand out a commercial license is because they are also >> > the Copyright holders, which you aren't even after forking. >> There is also some middle ground here. Which is the overlap of the two. >> Where the user (me) wants to use a OSS DBMS, is happy to forward the >> source code, inform the customer of the GPL licence etc. >> But at the same time produce a commercial application which then uses >> this installed DBMS server/client, without effecting the GPL package. >> MySQL say that this is an extension of the application, and therefore >> breaks the GPL, and therefore a licence is needed. They are however, >> the only big GPL user who thinks this way. I note for example the >> number of companies selling commercial CGI software designed to run on >> Apache, server/client, to which no licence is mandatory. Also Sendmail, >> GCC, other DBMS's, and indeed GNU/Linux it's self. >> None of these very large groups consider a licence *mandatory* for use >> when supporting a commercial application. I use the term 'mandatory', >> they may still choose to purchase a licence. If they did insist on a >> licence, a very large number of very large companies would have to >> withdraw a very large number of products. Eg, IBM who use Sendmail to >> support their commercial email servers. >> Therefore, I can see no reason why not somebody could fork MySQL into >> FreeSQL. It would take a few hours at SorceForge, a 'sed' of MySQL into >> FreeSQL', and a good posting to Slashdot. Keep it 100% GPL without >> breaking either the wording or the spirit of the document. Remove all >> reference to copyright material belonging to MySQL. It's either GPL or >> cpryright, not both. Then use this without commercial licence... >> BTW, as to another posting. 'Either accept the GPL or purchase a >> licence'. I do note another option (apart from forking): Use something >> else. Is MySQL really that good? I do worry that with arrogant >> statements like this, this is exactly what people will do, in droves. >> If that's okay with you, well... >> > >> > HTH, >> > >> > Benjamin. >> > >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Before posting, please check: >> http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) >> http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) >> To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To unsubscribe, e-mail >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
