Re: Licensing MaxDB

On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 04:15  AM, Marcin P wrote:
> One more question related to:
>
>> As long as Company X doesn't distribute it, Company X is free to use 
>> MaxDB
>> with the program written by you, as a programmer employed by Company 
>> X,
>> under the GPL. No payment.
>
> OK. Let's suppose the following situation:
>
> We have our commercial product which uses
> as database-store SAP DB (and now MaxDB) engine.
> We sell it to our customer, but using Application Service Provider 
> model,
> which means we don't distribute SAP DB to our customers, we only
> distribute our client's part of sofware or give them acces to
> our Web Application. Database is still installed
> on our side. Moreover, let's suppose for a moment that the client
> software does not use any client interfaces like ODBC, JDBC etc - it
> receives data only from middle-tier components which are also
> installed on our server.
> In this situation - do we have to buy a license from MySQL??
> Please, put some light on this use-case.

Good Day All,

First, let me clarify that I am not a lawyer and this does not 
constitute legal advice.

The simple answer for all cases is this:
If you distribute a derived work that includes a GPL licensed product, 
then the derived work must also be GPL licensed. In our case, you also 
have the option to purchase a commercial license for MySQL products 
from MySQL.

The difficult parts are defining what distribution and derivation are.

Unfortunately, there are no fixed legal definitions that apply to all 
countries as to what either of these terms are. In the USA, for 
example, different regions have different processes for determining if 
two combined pieces of software form a derived work.

In this case, I would suspect that the intent of your middleware is 
what would matter most in a court case. If the middleware appears to 
mostly be in place to circumvent licensing restrictions, then it (I 
believe) would not circumvent the license.  If the middleware is an 
abstraction layer that simply allows for convenient access to a variety 
of different data sources, then the license might be circumvented.

Again, I cannot emphasize enough that I am not qualified to give advice 
here - especially since I am not familiar with even the broadest 
generalities of Polish law.


However, I can try to recommend a few different courses of action:

0. Use the GPL license for your software. Under the terms of the GPL, 
you cannot charge for a license of the software and you must distribute 
your source code. However, you can charge for service contracts, 
warranties, etc.  For example, Montavista (http://mvista.com/) sells 
value added versions of GPL licensed software for very significant 
fees. Other companies, such as ourselves and Sleepycat, use a 
dual-licensing model - which is also a very viable business model. 
(Additionally, there should be additional flexibility with regards to 
open source and free software licensing available to our users by the 
end of August - more details when they are available.)

1. Purchase a license. If the licensing fees are not appropriate for 
your software - say that you sell a shareware product for 75 Euros - 
then please contact us to work out alternate licensing arrangements.

2. Use an Open Source database that is not licensed under a copyleft 
license - such as FreBird.

3. Contract the services of a lawyer who is an expert in software for 
your region. She can help you determine whether or not you are in 
compliance. I understand that this is difficult for independent 
developers or small ISVs. An excellent lawyer in this area is Dan 
Ravicher - Dan is very ethical and approachable lawyer who is an expert 
in matters of GPL compliance. See 
http://www.pbwt.com/Attorney/index-bio.asp?bio_id=387 for a 
professional overview and 
http://slashdot.org/interviews/01/06/05/122240.shtml for an example of 
his work with the community. (Note: Mr. Ravicher provides pro bono 
legal services for the Free Software Foundation. I am an associate 
member of the Free Software Foundation.)

4. Use a proprietary product that forces your client to purchase a 
license.


My simple solution is this: If you use software, then contribute back 
to the people who produce the software. If you make money, share money. 
If you use it in the terms of the community, then work with the 
community and help other users and/or the developers.



I hope that this help you!

Yours Truly,
Zak Greant
MySQL AB Community Advocate