On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 00:35, Ed Carp wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > The change is made to avoid lots of discussions about when the GPL > > is effective. Basically we follow the same rules as we always have > > about when we want people to pay us for a commercial license but > > now we have a better legal ground to base it on. I hope it will > > save us (especially me since I have become the MySQL licensing guru > > :-) lots of discussion about who has to pay and who can use the GPL > > version. And of course this is totally in the line with what the > > Free Software Foundation and RMS wants since it spreads free > > software. > > > > We can still make exceptions and allow free use if there is a good > > reason for it (But not for "I like to make money without freeing my > > code or paying you" like reasons). > > > > So the goal is to get money out of the people who distribute non > > OpenSource application using MySQL. We need the income for the much > > larger development team we now have. And the cost of running a real > > company instead of the administrative mess that Monty and I had > > earlier (And that mess was very very bad for my ease of mind). > > Does this also apply to non-open-source but free applications? For > example, we give away Escapade for free - always have, always will, > at least for the minimal version of the product. If we develop a > non-free version of Escapade that uses mysqlclient, what happens > then? We also distribute statically-linked and dynamically-linked > versions of the product, and I would be interested in knowing MySQL's > position on this issue in regards to licensing.
I wrote "non OpenSource" above since the price you charge is totally irrelevant to the GPL. You need a commercial license if you do not ship you source code regardless of price point. But giving away your product for free will affect the price we charge for a commercial license! We have no standard rule for this since the reasons for vendors to give away their products for free vary wildly. If you send a explanation of the situation including how you make money on your product to [EMAIL PROTECTED] am sure we will propose something. A problem might be since our sales staff (like any good sales staff) likes to concentrate on the big deals you might get inappropriate answers. In that case (but only in that case) you can send a inquire directly to me and I will try to work something out. As for dynamic vs static linking, it does not really matter. See the FSF GPL FAQ (at fsf.org) for more information about this issue. /David --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
