Re: Any license news?

On 1/5/07, Alessandro Ranellucci <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I found this old thread: http://lists.mysql.com/perl/2651
> and I thought that by DBD::mysql 4.00 the dual-license scheme would have
> been replaced by the single GPL to comply with MySQL client libraries.
> Why is DBD::mysql still distributed under Perl license, given that is
> definitely "derivative work" of a GPL library?
>
> Cheers,
>
>   - alessandro ranellucci.
>

That thread is two years old and dates from a time when GPL fanatics
with a poor understanding of both the law and the GPL itself were
going crazy in ways that were later shown to be in error. Although I
don't know what was in there at the time, the current DBD::MySQL code
is certainly not a derrivative work, legally or otherwise, of libmysql
or any other GPL'd work. Simply using an API or connecting to a socket
doesn't make a work derrivative: that's what APIs and sockets are for.
By that logic, your web browser would be a derrivative work of every
website you visit and a SOAP or REST client would be derrivative of
the service it interfaces with. The whole idea was crazy two years
ago, and it reamins crazy today.

You'll notice that, despite the apparent gravity of the discussion,
the thread died almost immediately. Even at the height the GPL
paranoia nobody gave the idea more than a passing thought.

HTH,

-- jay
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