licensing implications

[John Summerfield]

Konstantin Svist wrote:
> Don Russell wrote:
>> IANAL...
>>
>> If a company has a commercial software product using some proprietary 
>> database, and they want to switch to using MySQL, does the GPL 
>> license allow them to continue to sell their product just as they did 
>> before, or does GPL then mean their entire product has to fall under 
>> GPL?
>>
>> Thanks
>
> ditto, IANAL...
>
> AFAIK:
> * If you're not altering MySQL but are interfacing with it (as a 
> normal sql client), your product can be licensed as anything.
If you're shipping mysql, then you must provide (or promise to provide) 
the source code (including build instructions) you used, whether you 
changed it or not. This isn't quite the full story - read the GPL for 
that, but providing the source code on the same CD fully discharges your 
obligations.

> * If you're altering MySQL code and giving the end result to someone, 
> you have to provide the altered code, as it falls under GPL. If you're 
> keeping the result for yourself only, you don't have to provide 
> anything to anyone (your code supposedly must be GPL'ed, but since 
> you're not giving anyone the binaries, you don't have to provide the 
> sources)
> * If you're writing a plugin for MySQL - that's a gray area to me.. 
> keep asking...
>
> HTH
>