MySQL client libraries licensing (was Fedora Core 2 wishlists)

[Nils O. Selåsdal]

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 19:57, Adam Debus wrote:
> >
> > I think that the real "problem" fall over the person that develops php
> > based software and is using MySQL, remember that the GPL does not
> > restrict you to distribute GPL licensed code with software that uses
> > other licenses, If you develop an application with php and mysql4 your
> > code must be GPL (unless you obtain a different license from the MySQL
> > developers)
> >
> 
>     As it has been explined to me by a lawyer: That's only true if you are
> embedding the mysql library in your software (statically linking). Merely
> using MySQL as a database for PHP does not tie you to either license because
> you are not embedding code from either program.
> 
>     The same goes for Perl or C/C++. Writing code that utilizes the language
> does not automatically tie you to the license the programming language uses,
> unless you statically link against the libraries.
> 
>     Otherwise, pretty much nothing in Linux would be other then GPL, since
> that's what glibc is licensed under, including PHP, Perl and Apache, all of
> which have licenses other then GPL.
glibc is NOT GPL, it is LGPL. Big diffrence. Had glibc been GPL, you'd
been right. Virtually everything else had to be GPL also.

I also fail to see how statically linking should differ from dynamically
linking in this respekt.

-- 
Vennlig hilsen/Best Regards
Nils Olav Selåsdal
System Engineer
UtelSystems a/s

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