Alvaro Herrera wrote: >Rainer Bauer wrote: >> "Andrej Ricnik-Bay" wrote: >> >> >On Nov 7, 2007 2:40 PM, Rainer Bauer <usenet@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> > >> >> That's nice to hear. But I respect licences as they are and the ODBCng driver >> >> is licenced under the GPL. >> >That doesn't mean that you're not allowed to use it with commercial >> >applications; it just means that you need to be happy to provide the >> >source for it on request. >> >> Which is exactly the reason why the LGPL licence was created. So that any >> software can link against a library without the restrictions of the GPL. > >Keep in mind, though, that the ODBC driver is not linked to your app. >It is only loaded on demand at run time, and can be replaced by any >other ODBC driver. So AFAIU your application is "shielded" from GPL. >IANAL of course. Neither am I. However, the GPL FAQ has an entry specially for this case: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NFUseGPLPlugins> "If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins. In order to use the GPL-covered plug-ins, the main program must be released under the GPL or a GPL-compatible free software license, and that the terms of the GPL must be followed when the main program is distributed for use with these plug-ins." The way I read this section is that linking to a GPL ODBC driver would imply that I have to release my program under a GPL (compatible) licence. This was one of the reasons why I added Postgres support to my program instead of MySQL [1]. They altered the licence for their drivers from LGPL to GPL so that you have to purchase a commercial licence. Rainer [1] In the meantime I am of course glad that I made this decision. I have not only learned a lot more about databases, but especially that Postgres is superior to MySQL ;-) ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
