MySQL 4

[Ken Snider]

Chris Adams wrote:

> But _something_ has to talk the MySQL protocol over that socket.  Right
> now, the only implementations commonly available are licensed under the
> GPL (and AFAIK the protocol is not documented except in the source, and
> they do change it with new versions).  If I have a perl program that
> uses the DBI module, it would use DBD::mysql, which in turn is linked
> against libmysqlclient; my code is then linked to libmysqlclient and
> falls under the GPL.
> 
> Most code I write I put under the GPL, but that's me.  We have customers
> that write their own code (or pay someone to write code for them) that
> may not want to do that.

And these people are *distributing binaries* linked against these libraries?

People seem to forget that the GPL only covers *distribution*, not *use*.

Any commercial entity can happily link against the MySQL libraries all they 
want as long as they don't distribute the resulting binaries!

This affects Red Hat as a distro, but I'd be mighty surprised if it affects 
your customers as well.

-- 
Ken Snider