Chris Smith wrote:
[me:]
If you (the supplier of the software) supply GPled s/w as part of your
delivered application then I think the terms of the GPL are clear --
the whole application must be GPLed or supplied under the terms of some
other GPL-compatible[*] licence.
Right. The question, then, is whether a DBMS is part of an application,
or another application that interacts with the application in question.
I think it's pretty obvious that the latter is true. Others may
disagree.
Me, for one ;-)
I'll agree that there may be cases where an application is clearly independent
of MySQL, even if a MySQL installation is shipped with it, and the user is
given the option of installing it. For the me (no lawyer) the criterion would
be "does the application clearly run, and do something useful (perhaps with
reduced functionality), if MySQL isn't available ?" One easy way to achieve
that logical separation would be if the app worked just as well with a range of
DBMSs, and was capable of using whatever the user had installed (within
reason). That doesn't seem too far away from the language of the GPL (section
2)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole.
If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the
Program, and can be reasonably considered independent
and separate works in themselves, then this License, and
its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute
them as separate works. But when you distribute the same
sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the
Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms
of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend
to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless
of who wrote it.
But I wouldn't want to bet money that a lawyer/court would agree that the
separation I mentioned above is sufficient to make the last quoted sentence
irrelevant.
And often, of course, applications do not have that degree of separation -- in
which case I would claim that the DBMS /is/ part of the delivered app and the
terms of the GPL apply in full force.
MySQL is (IMO rather transparently) on a campaign to distort
the meaning of the GPL to the point that no one is quite sure what to
think.
I'm not convinced that many people will pay much attention to how MySQL choose
to interpret the GPL. Hell, I'm not convinced that many people even think
about how /they/ interpret the GPL beyond "I didn't pay for this stuff, so I
can do whatever I like with it".
But I do agree that it would be better if MySQL issued their stuff under a
licence which says what they want it to say, rather than (even partly)
overloading the GPL.
In any case, not using MySQL removes the difficulty at very little cost.
Agreed.
In fact, people should really just stop considering MySQL a GPL'ed
product, because the legal threats do just as much harm to people's
freedoms as a more restrictive license does.
There's something to be said for that too.
-- chris