Re: MySQL 4.0 license change

Hi Oded,

Thanks for the intepretation of the GPL i am familiar with it too since 
our company also contributes to a lot of open source developent 
(unfortunately not to kannel - yet)

My point was the mysql inteprets the GPL differently from everyone else. 
Yes we intend to to link the client against a close source product 
that's why i wrote to them in the first place asking for a license. What 
i disagree with is their insistence of our buying a server license. We 
have no plans at all to redistribute mysql. Our product is not limited 
to a mysql backend anyway.

the bottom line from the mysql company is that if your product requires 
the buyer to download mysql server you need to buy a commercial license. 
This is clearly mentioned on their site.

According to that intepretation almost everything that uses mysql 
becomes a derived work.

Anyway i think we are getting too far off topic so i will stop with this 
post.

best regards
raditha

 
Oded Arbel wrote:

>׳‘׳™׳•׳ ׳¨׳׳©׳•׳ 25 ׳™׳ ׳•׳׳¨ 2004, 12:03, ׳ ׳›׳×׳‘ ׳¢׳ ׳™׳“׳™ Raditha Dissanayake:
>  
>
>>The Problem here is that mysql does not intepret GPL in the same way
>>that the rest of the world does.
>>I wrote to them asking for a client license and they insist i need to
>>buy the server license and with it comes the client license. Do i need
>>to buy a road so that i can drive a car?
>>    
>>
>
>That's licensing issue which has no bearing at all on GPL. to use a GPLed 
>product in a GPL compliant code you don't need any special license. 
>
>The only reason you'd need a different license then GPL is if you want to use
> GPLed code in a product in a manner that does not comply with the GPL, in 
>which case the copyright holder can set any terms he or she likes - and it 
>doesn't have any effect on the GPL. MySQL can decide that in order to get a 
>license you'd need to send them a singing telegram, and that would be 
>perfectly OK - because you want a proprietary license. 
>
>If you want to use MySQL under the GPL license all you have to do is make sure 
>that your product complies with the GPL as I've written below. you do not 
>need any additional licenses from MySQL AB. AFAIU Kannel fully complies with 
>the GPL and so can link against MySQL libraries. 
>
>If OTOH you want to redistribute Kannel w/o source code (which the Kannel 
>license allows you to do), that also means you'd need to distrbute closed 
>source code that links with MySQL client code. this is specifically 
>disallowed by the GPL which means you'd need a special non-GPL license from 
>  
>


-- 
Raditha Dissanayake.
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