Author: Vic Date: To: hampshire Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Sun to Buy MySQL
>> MySQL is GPL. >
> Including the client libraries I believe, so you can't[1] use it
> as a backend for non-GPL'd applications anymore. Changing them
> to LGPL (or BSD) would make it more useful.
I think that's the point.
The client library is the bit you need to make *your* application play
with MySQL. AFAICS, there's never a reason to pay for the *server* itself;
you could always ship that as an aggregation with your code & be
GPL-compliant, despite the fact that your code is 100% proprietary.
It is the client library that saves you from having to write your own DB;
if these are all LGPL[1], then the application code doesn't have to be
open-source.
And yes, I did hit this head-on yesterday whilst trying to put MySQL
capability into a closed-source product.
