MySQL client relicense (was RE: Fedora Core 2 wishlists)

[Murray.Cumming at Comneon.com]

> > I am looking in the MySQL 4 tarball. Exactly what license 
> document do 
> > you mean? COPYING.LIB is still the LGPL.
> 
> COPYING.LIB is just a copy of the LGPL (I don't know why they 
> include it since nothing references it AFAIK).
> 
> The web site says it is all under the GPL, right at the top 
> of the download page at 
> http://www.mysql.com/downloads/index.html.  > The manual from 
> 4.0.16 says:
> 
>   All the `MySQL'-specific source in the server, the `mysqlclient'
>   library and the client, as well as the `GNU' `readline' library is
>   covered by the `GNU General Public License'.

Well, I think that's just because they are inept. I have asked them about
that before, but I think they were too inept to understand the question. I
find these pages more explicit:

http://www.mysql.com/products/mysql++/index.html
http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql++/D_Copyright.html

I know that's talking about the C++ library, but it's hard to see how the
C++ wrapper of a GPL library could be LGPL, or why they would do that.

If nothing has changed and no announcement has been made and nobody has
asked them then I don't see a reason to think that the licensing has
changed.

Murray Cumming
www.murrayc.com
murrayc at usa.net