Quoting Clark C. Evans (c...@clarkevans.com): > I think MySQL AB's licensing strategy is offered in this > forum as an overreach. In particular, Larry Rosen argues > that there is no derived work when an application simply > uses MySQL as intended via its public interface, even if > the application relys upon specific MySQL functionality.
MySQL AB's sales staff is reputed to have made claims to customers that were insupportable. (Whether that thus constitutes a licensing strategy I would not know, but I'm generally not quite that cynical.) That is, the sales staff were reputed to have told customers that, if they used any proprietary software whatsoever in conjunction with MySQL in any way, then the fact that MySQL's client libraries were under GPLv2 with a meant that the customer was obliged to purchase a for-money licence to use MySQL Enterprise instead of using an instance under open source licensing. This was a doubtful argument in several ways at the same time: 1. MySQL wasn't pure GPLv2 anyway, but GPLv2 with a GPL linking exception clause of some sort (something like Classpath's; I don't care enough to look up particulars at the moment). 2. Even if the linking exception clause weren't present, the implied notion that _any_ ancillary software is inherently a derivative work of MySQL RDBMS and its access libraries is laughable. 3. If the problem is licensing of the access libraries, then there are also several other usable access libraries, some under liberal academic licences. (Reportedly, the sales staff carefully failed to mention that.) Which is mostly just a case in point about why a businessman who talks directly to salesman and believes what they say without investigation has a fool for a negotiator. -- Rick Moen "'Decimate' when referring to killing one r...@linuxmafia.com in ten. 'Octomate' when referring to the McQ! (4x80) cephalopod dating site." -- FakeAPStylebook _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss