NYCPHP Meetup

NYPHP.org

[nycphp-talk] MySQL Licensing

Chris Shiflett shiflett at php.net
Fri Jan 9 16:32:44 EST 2004


There is an interesting open license review for MySQL at:

http://zak.greant.com/archives/000203.html

This was sparked by recent blog discussions about MySQL's licensing. There
is obviously at the very least some confusion surrounding MySQL's
licensing, and there are even potentially flaws in it.

For example, George Schlossnagle brought up a very good point that he can
write an application that uses Oracle as backend storage without paying
Oracle any money. Those who buy this software and need to implement it
will need to have Oracle, and it is they who must pay the licensing fee.
MySQL's license appears to extend to such applications, and no one from
MySQL AB refuted this.

I bring this up here, because Zak is going to be at LinuxWorld and plans
to host discussions on this issue there. It seems like NYPHP will be a
group with a lot of representation at this event, and most of us are
likely interested in either:

1. Understanding MySQL's licensing better
2. Trying to affect positive change in MySQL's licensing

I'm potentially interested in both.

Chris

=====
Chris Shiflett - http://shiflett.org/

PHP Security Handbook
     Coming mid-2004
HTTP Developer's Handbook
     http://httphandbook.org/



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