Don Russell wrote:
If a company has a commercial software product using some proprietary
database, and they want to switch to using MySQL, does the GPL license
allow them to continue to sell their product just as they did before, or
does GPL then mean their entire product has to fall under GPL?
If it links with the MySQL client libraries, then the code so linked must
be
GPL.
I'm not sure what's meant by "links with MySQL"... do you mean "link" as in
combining object modules to create a single executable? That won't be the
case. I envision a communication link, to a mySQL server, possibly (probably
on the same physical machine as the "application". There would be o need to
change mySQL, other than through any normal configuration parameters...
You normally need a client library linked with your application to
accomplish this communication. You can get a commercial license for
mysql if you don't want to have the GPL terms affect your linked code.
Or, you could use the BSD-licensed PostgreSQL instead and not have
licensing
issues.
But I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
No worries... I'm just "testing the waters" to get a feel for what's what...
I appreciate the suggestion...
Postgresql has some other advantages too.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
