> Quoting Andy Sy ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > > > Yes, of course, should have been more explicit there. I meant > > to say you need a commercial license if you write an app that > > _links_ with MySQL and don't want to release your sources. > > No, that is still not right. First of all, you mean proprietary > licence, not "commercial".
Well, that's what MySQL calls their license. Who are we to argue with them? It's commercial. After all you have to pay for it, right? :-) Now, after you get a commercial MySQL license, you can then set about releasing a MySQL based product that has a "proprietary license". But anyway, how does a "commercial" license differs from a "proprietary" one? By 'proprietary' do you mean closed source? If so, note that a lot of Delphi component vendors release the sources to their products, but you still cannot use their products [usually in a commercial setting] without paying for them first. These products are _commercially_ licensed but are they "proprietary"? Nor are their licenses GPL-compatible. This is because you are required to make the source code to your GPL-code derived product freely available even to people who do not wish to pay for it, something that most of these Delphi component providers do not allow. I fail to see how any GPL-compatible license can be considered commercial since one of its primary tenets is that you have to allow anyone to distribute the sources to your product freely (in the free beer sense). _Dual licensing_ is essential to making a business case out of GPL products and in these cases, GPL ironically provides better protection for the businessman than BSD or MPL style licenses - because they essentially make the terms for using your source code so inflexible (release source for everything that incorporates it to even the tiniest degree) as to force people to pay for a _commercial_ license in order to be able to release their product under a _proprietary_ one. > > GPL requires you to release full sources to anything that even uses a > > teeny bit of code from a GPL'ed module (such as readline). > > No. Let's go over this again: First of all, it's not a matter of > "use", but rather of linking. Usage that doesn't involve linking has no > copyleft implications. E.g., codebases communicating via xmlrpc or CGI > are not examples of linking. Well of course, that's why the phrase was 'uses code' (meaning incorporates code), not 'uses <product>'. I think you're just picking at nits here. Also note that it goes beyond just _linking_, even cut-and-paste counts as 'using the code'. > However a much more significant point is that there is no > obligation to release source unless one has distributed > binaries. > Second and more important, the obligation is triggered only if one has > _distributed_ binaries. Usage that doesn't involve distribution, e.g., > running a database on a server inside one's enterprise, that is > nonetheless _used_ by remote users, doesn't have any copyleft > implications. Iirc, this also means as long as limit the distribution of binaries using GPL'ed code within your organization, you need not release your source code to the rest of the world either... > No. Let's go over this again: First of all, it's not a matter of > "use", but rather of linking. Usage that doesn't involve linking has no > copyleft implications. E.g., codebases communicating via xmlrpc or CGI > are not examples of linking. Now here's something to think about. If one were to build a Web Service (a much abused term... tsk.) on GPL'ed code, could additions to said code could remain closed source as long as it is not deployed on machines outside an organization? What's RMS' take on this? GPL's legal wording does not anticipate the myriad ways of code sharing that today's increasingly distributed computing environment allows. Not that I believe ASPs (application service provider) are a particularly good idea (reminds me of push - anyone remember that? hehehe) but still, that's one way to subvert the GPL's agenda/goals... _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Searchable Archives With Friendly Web Interface at http://marc.free.net.ph To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
