On Aug 11, 2004, at 1:21, DebugasRu wrote:
> 1)
> LM> If your software is licensed under either the GPL-compatible Free
> Software
> LM> License as defined by the Free Software Foundation or approved by
> OSI, then
> LM> use our GPL licensed version.
>
> 2)
> LM> If you distribute a proprietary application in any way, and you
> are not
> LM> licensing and distributing your source code under GPL, you need to
> purchase
> LM> a commercial license of MySQL
>
> To be honest i don't understand the double licensing issues at all.
> Does the second part 2) applies to the developer of proprietary
> software
> only or does it apply to its users too ?
Hi!
The second part only applies to the distributed copies of MySQL.
Each distributed copy of MySQL needs to have a valid license. This can
be the GPL, or if the distributor cannot comply with the GPL, then they
should have one proprietary license for every copy of the software that
they ship.
To make our money on licensing and to keep things simple, we always
recommend that proprietary use of MySQL be done under a proprietary
license. This is not required in all cases though.
> Why a user cannot install and use MySql under GPL and then install and
> use proprietary software under whatever licence he got it.
A user can do this. However, if a developer of proprietary software
that is based on MySQL distributes that software, then they need to
make sure that the distributed copies have valid non-GPL licenses.
> Or do you want to say that the end user can in general use MySQL under
> GPL, but as soon as he tries to use it with that particular
> proprietary software then he can no longer use MySQL under GPL ?
> This seems to contradict the GPL license terms
Users are free to use MySQL under the terms of the GPL as long as they
comply with the terms of the license. They can even use GPL licensed
MySQL and proprietarily licensed versions of MySQL at the same time.
Cheers!
--
Zak Greant
MySQL AB Community Advocate
