We at CESC (the 100 years old power utility serving around 17 million consumers) are using Linux in the following areas:
1) Web services (our web site contains 36 months billing data of 17 million consumers in MySQL database)
Was browsing through the sites of a few software vendors who follow a dual licensing policy and thus came by this URL: http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/
<quote>
The guiding business principle of MySQL is one of fair exchange, or Quid pro Quo ("something for something"). From a licensing perspective, we have two different products depending on usage and distribution, though technically they have the same source code.
Thanks to our licensing model, we are capable of producing superior software at a much lower cost than proprietary software vendors. That's why MySQL is the world's most popular open source database. Our licensing options include:
* The Commercial License, which allows you to provide commercial software licenses to your customers or distribute MySQL-based applications within your organization. This is for organizations that do not want to release the source code for their applications as open source / free software; in other words they do not want to comply with the GNU General Public License (GPL). For more detail on the Commercial non-GPL License, click here [http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/commercial-license.html] . Or, if you want more information on pricing, click here [https://order.mysql.com/].
* For those developing open source applications, the Open Source License allows you to offer your software under an open source / free software license to all who wish to use, modify, and distribute it freely. The Open Source License allows you to use the software at no charge under the condition that if you use MySQL in an application you redistribute, the complete source code for your application must be available and freely redistributable under reasonable conditions. MySQL AB bases its interpretation of the GPL on the Free Software Foundation's Frequently Asked Questions [http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html]. For more information on MySQL's Open Source License, click here [http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/opensource-license.html].
</quote>
Note: The additional URLs in '[]' are inserted by me.
Further on, http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/faq.html states
<quote>
MySQL AB offers a commercial license for organizations that do not want to release the source code for their application. Commercial license customers get a commercially supported product with a level of assurance from MySQL AB, without the requirement that their MySQL-based software must be "open sourced". MySQL is able to provide a commercial license because it has full ownership of the MySQL code.
</quote>
So in case of LAMP implementation/deployments at accounts (like CESC) does it make sense to go for the commercial license or does the GPL suffice ?
Prima facie, CESC's productisation of MySQL for its web services means that under GPL the source of such product is required to be made available.
Rgds Sankarshan
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