MySQL 4.0.x

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 10:32 5/17/2004, Thomas Zehetbauer wrote:
> > Indeed this is old. Red Hat is built "exclusively from Free Software", a
> > category in which MySQL no longer fits.
>
>Why? MySQL is available "under the free software/open source GNU General
>Public License (commonly known as the "GPL") or under a commercial
>license." So I guess it's only fair that RedHat has to pay for MySQL if
>they want to ship some closed source binaries with their commercial RHEL
>distribution.

Your guess is incorrect, Tom. What MySQL wants is for any *installation* of 
MySQL which is used in what they consider a commercial fashion to have a 
commercial license. So it's not Red Hat who would have to pay, it's you or 
I or anyone which (key phrase here) in the opinion of MySQL AB is using 
their software in any way which they consider should have a commercial license.

It is a more complex issue than you think. The license for 3.x was clearer 
and did explicitly allow the things which are important to Red Hat. The new 
license for 4.x does not. I suggest you do some more reading on the subject 
since it is at the very least an interesting case study in business... in 
particular, this list's archives have *dozens* of messages on the subject.

Cheers,


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com