Erik Jones wrote:
They've gotten around that by making MySQL "dual-licensed". If you're
going to be using MySQL in a commercial application then you can not
use the GPL'd version, you have to use their paid, commercial license.
My understanding is that's not quite true. The client libraries are GPL,
so you can't use them directly, but I don't see what would stop you
using their ODBC/JDBC drivers with your non-GPL application (especially
if you support other ODBC databases as well). The server can't be
bundled in your application, but you can still get the user to install
it and use it with your application.
Why go to all that fuss, though, when you can just use a database with a
more friendly license? For embedding there's SQLite, Firebird, etc, and
for standalone work there's PostgreSQL. You'd contribute any changes or
patches back to the database developers anyway, after all - if not by
way of thanks and the desire to contribute then at least because it's
not worth the hassle of maintaining them out-of-tree - so I don't think
the DB teams would gain much from the GPL anyway.
Speaking of which, thanks to everybody who's worked on PostgreSQL- it's
magic, and it's made my latest project at work a lot easier. I keep on
finding myself thinking "I wish I could do <something>" only to find out
that it's been implemented in the next version. For example, now EXECUTE
... INTO has been implemented for 8.3 . It's turning into a seriously
impressive database.
--
Craig Ringer
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