basic questions

[Xavier Noria]

On Feb 13, 2005, at 8:48, Marcus R. Breese wrote:

> Since MySQL AB owns the copyright to the MySQL source code / program,
> they can license their software as they see fit.  It just so happens
> that they dual-license the software: GPL or commerical.

Agreed.

> You can distribute as many copies of GPL'd MySQL DB as you'd like with
> your closed source application.  So long as you are only distributing
> it.
>
> The trick is, you can't use the MySQL libraries to access the MySQL DB
> unless your software is also GPL.

But the drivers are no mentioned in the terms under which you can 
choose a license. If I happened to use some non-GPL drivers I would be 
required to buy a comercial license for the commercial webapp.

Maybe there's the implicit assumption that it can't be the case that 
those drivers exists and do not require themselves a commercial license 
of MySQL AB as happens here for instance?

     http://www.mertechdata.com/homepage/content.aspx?id=mysqlflex.html

(Any counterexample?)

In that case MySQL would be Open Source according to the OSD in this 
sense:

     1. You can use a GPL version + the FOSS exception

     2. Since there is no practical way to use MySQL in a
        commercial product which does not comply with the
        cases in 1, MySQL AB gives you yet the chance to
        do so buying their commercial license

Would you (Marcus and all) agree with that interpretation in spite that 
it is not exactly formally what they say?

-- fxn