On 2/22/07, mos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 12:51 PM 2/22/2007, software advocate wrote: >Let me present what I've read from the MySQL site so far. > >The MySQL protocol notice > http://dev.mysql.com/doc/internals/en/licensing-notice.html > >Okay, really confusing. What if someone creates a mysql client without >looking at docs or source code of the MySQL client? What if someone simply >sniffs traffic and builds the protocol from scratch. This scenario can be >compared to samba in my comparison. Samba also uses proprietary structures, >but they didn't look at source or docs, they sniffed and built from scratch. >Therefore, why is the MySQL AB throwing wool over people's eyes? Is this >their view of the GPL? I remember reading on the GNU site a FAQ describing >the GPL protocol... > >If people are going to preach Open Source Software and damn closed source >software which tries to emulate open source protocols, what makes it any >better ethically from closed source software? There are people who have reworked the MySQL API calls so you don't need to distribute the MySQL DLL library with your application. You can (at least under Windows), distribute nothing but an .exe file and it will access a MySQL database just fine, under the assumption that your app doesn't require the MySQL client libraries so you don't need a license. MySQL AB will of course protest and duke it out with you in court, costing both sides quite a bit of money.
If they sued anyone over proper use of software covered by the GPL license, they'd lose. Also costing them both attorney fees of the defendant. My attitude is if you are going to distribute a commercial application, use
something other than MySQL. It's fine for web servers and in-house farting around, but for commercial apps I'd want something that has a zero footprint install and doesn't require a database administrator to maintain. I would also insist on getting something with one database engine that supports hundreds of users, transactions, RI, and is blindingly fast and has no royalties. With MySQL you have to compromise between using fast MyISAM tables or the slower InnoDb transactional tables. And of course there is no table wide encryption so your client can monkey about with the tables all he wants, which is something I'd want to avoid if I were shipping a commercial application. And of course I don't want to fork over $595 to MySQL AB for each application that I sell.
Well, the program will be used to modify/fetch data out of pre existing databases which are used by common MySQL based applications; phpbb, wordpress, etc... I do agree with you though, MySQL isn't what I'd used on a large commercial project. A good example of a non-gpl mysql client would be ruby-mysql (note: not the mysql-ruby project). If only more people created libraries like this, there would be more people using MySQL.
