On Thu, 2008-03-06 at 22:15 -0500, Lamar Owen wrote: > On Thursday 06 March 2008, Don Russell wrote: > > IANAL... > > > > 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. Note, however, the MySQL open-source license exception at http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/foss-exception.html. > > 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. > -- Matthew Saltzman Clemson University Mathematical Sciences mjs AT clemson DOT edu http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
