Hi Frank,
I've found that lawyers aren't even lawyers!
The DB plugin itself is under the GPL! Look at the plugin distributed by
RB, and see the source code and its license in the copying file!
Inside the copying file, the GPL has two paragraphs:
2.....
"b. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that
in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program
or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge
to all third parties under the terms of this License."
"This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program
into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library,
you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary
applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the
GNU Library General Public License instead of this License."
The implications of these statement are what drives the warning about
GPL. If the plugin were LGPL, then there would be no problem.
However, if you are publishing a work that "contains" the GPL'd plugin
code, then you would need to open up your source code, since your code would
then fall under the license you agreed to when accepting the product in
transfer and then using it.
Since the contract is in simple language (not lawyerese), then the clear
language meanings tend to apply, at least in the US.
I am not a lawyer either, but I am also not stupid (just don't ask my
wife), and I have attorneys on call that I talk to from time to time.
I am not certain what RB's exposure is. They may have absolutely no
exposure by providing this plugin. However, if you distribute a program
that is linked with this plugin, you have full exposure, as your program
would be using that code to operate with and would fall under 2.b.
As I said, this is only a friendly warning, you are free to ignore it
without hurting anyone's feelings.
Talk to a real lawyer for a less clear answer. ;) I often will tease
my attorneys with that statement. They usually agree with it, but they are
bound to practice law as the current flow of decisions force it to be
practiced. A "fact" known in law one day will not apply the next day after
a superior court rules.
thanks,
wade
Subject: Re: MySQL and RB (warning)
From: Frank Condello <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 16:50:57 -0500
On 13-Jan-07, at 4:08 PM, Wade Maxfield wrote:
I did give RS a feedback request for a non-GPL plugin for MySQL
to RB,
but they said that was MySQL's issue, not theirs.
IANAL, but I was under the impression that the DB plugins simply
provide an interface that allows RB-built apps to interact with
databases (such as MySQL). As such they wouldn't actually include any
MySQL source code, and wouldn't fall under that silly GPL.
Frank.
<http://developer.chaoticbox.com/>
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