MySQL 4

Thomas Zehetbauer thomasz at hostmaster.org
Wed Oct 6 21:01:03 UTC 2004


On Mit, 2004-10-06 at 15:45 -0400, Dan Williams wrote:
> That's hardly an answer to "what needs to be fixed."  You asserted that
> php is what needs to be changed.  Prove it.

PHP's license needs to be fixed as it is incompatible with the GPL.

> Taking someone else's legal advice when they are not a lawyer and not
> _your_ lawyer is insane and stupid as a basis for legal decisions.  Red
> Hat is a company.  Were we to get sued, we may be forced into things
> much worse than not distributing MySQL.

Not necessarily, firstly every lawyer is still human and therefore prone
to err, secondly a lawyer may legally only advice within certain ethic
boundaries.

> No, there is not a problem with the GPL.  There may (as I understand it)
> still be an issue with the MySQL AB's _attachment_ of the exception
> clause.  It is no longer a pure GPL license since this part is now
> there, and therefore you cannot use your current GPL knowledge to defend
> the current MySQL license.  This is not to say it will not be included
> at some future time, just that its licensing is in flux and not all
> questions have been answered.

MySQL 4 was initially released under pure GPL, this is when RedHat came
up with the lame excuse that it cannot be included because it conflicts
with PHP, this is why MySQL AB later added the FOSS exception.

Tom

-- 
  T h o m a s   Z e h e t b a u e r   ( TZ251 )
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Programmer: A biological machine designed to convert caffeine into code.



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