If you are doing commercial deployment of Rev relational database apps, and you don't want to or can't factor in the MySQL pricing, you need to confine your choices to PostgreSQL, Valentina, and, if you're writing single-user apps, altSQLite.
FWIW, MySQL (http://www.mysql.com) has cleaned up its message a lot in the last year or so. They are now much clearer about when you need their commercial license (at $595/server/yr. for basic support and $1495/server/yr. for extended support) and when the free GPL license will suffice.
But as I understand it (and I could be wrong about this but two attorneys have told me I'm right), if I, e.g., deploy an application designed to run on a user's desktop with a locally connected database or on a user's LAN where, again, the database resides on their server rather than mine, then I owe MySQL AB the server fee for each instance. That means (again, I'm hedging my bet here by saying I'm not sure this is correct, but I believe it is) I would pay $595/ client/year because each would have to have a local instance of the MySQL server running.
When I asked the MySQL AB folks if I'd have to pay this fee per client in cases where the client already has a MySQL instance running (e.g., it comes free with OS X as I recall), they said, "Well, it depends on the nature of the license of the providing party (in this case, Apple), but to be safe, you'd probably want to pay for it separately." They can't (or won't) tell me whether Apple's license covers me or not and Apple has not responded to my queries, either.
At the end of the day, and in keeping with my desire to stay out of courtrooms, I decided not to use MySQL in any situation where there might ever be a doubt about the licensing issue. That essentially means I don't use MySQL unless I'm designing an app I'm willing to distribute free as open source.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan Shafer, Co-Chair RevConWest '05 June 17-18, 2005, Monterey, California http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit/RevConWest
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