Thomas Zehetbauer wrote:
On Mit, 2004-10-27 at 10:01 -0400, James Kosin wrote:
MySQL changed their GPL and the people of Fedora, etc. did not like the changes. Basically, they are requiring anyone who uses MySQL for any commercial or managed purpose other than testing or development to pay royalties to MySQL.
MySQL4 is available under the terms of the GPL or a commercial license. Additionally there is an exception to permit linking with proprietary free and open source licensed software like the PHP.
They also have provisions to not distribute the source for some modules of MySQL.
MySQL is licensed and distributed under the terms of the GPL, this means that the complete source code must be made available. Except from your posting I have not heard of any missing source and one could even sue MySQL to provide it.
I could be wrong on some points, but you get the gist. Basically, they have started a move away from open source. MySQL 3.23.58 is the last with the open source GPL, so that is what FC2 has included.
On the contrary they have moved TOWARDS open source. Evil companies are no longer allowed to include MySQL with their closed source products, they have to either stick with MySQL-3, go GPL or pay the open source community their well deserved share.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for some of my comments; because my points above may not be totally true. I'm not good a speaking lawerese.
I have CC'ed this post to the MySQL licensing department and sincerely hope that they will sue you for spreading this FUD.
Tom
Tom,
If all these things are true, then why doesn't Fedora Core x contain the latest MySQL version?
And like I said, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm a little rusty at interpreting the underlying meaning on the license agreement; so, I default to the Fedora managers that decided not to include MySQL4 for licensing reasons.
James Kosin
