Zak,
I did take a look at the licensing info on the web site, but could use a
little more help.
Hi Mark,
Could you let me know what particular parts you had troubles with? That will help us fix them up.
Could you please clarify via an example? Let's say I develop some
application, an accounting app, or a generic database query utility that
can use accept any JDBC connection, for example. As long as I use
standard ANSI-ish SQL and the driver is robust enough, it should work
with just about any database. In that case, I assume no commercial
license is necessary(?).
If you application can use any database and is not distributed with MaxDB or MySQL, then it is very clear that your end user is free to choose whatever database they want on their end.
Taking it a step further, say I make changes to it to support any MaxDB
quirks or perhaps use knowledge of the system catalog tables, which I do
if I detect that the user has chosen to use a MaxDB JDBC driver. Am I
forced to either purchase a commercial license or make my code Open
Source? Is it really up to the customer who purchases the software that
is (optionally) MaxDB-compatible to purchase the required commercial
licenses?
Well, if you think that a derivative work is formed with GPL licensed code, then you need to make the derivative work GPL licensed. Of course, for the case that you cite, I believe that it is really not fair to the developer or the end user because the developer would need to get licensing for a product that the end user may or may not be using.
Most of the licensing that we have done in the past has been in the situation of a developer shipping MySQL with their product. In these cases, it is clearly the responsibility of the developer to get the needed licensing and then to pass these costs on to their users.
We are currently have a simple solution to help developers out in this situation. The solution is only a few days old right now and we still need to finish reviewing it before we release it publicly. I have a little mailing list set up to notify people about licensing changes like this and will add you to the list so that you will know as soon as the solution goes in place. If anyone else also wants to know, just drop me a private email asking to be added to the list.
Thanks for putting up with my questions.
Thanks for asking!
Cheers! --zak
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