MySQL client libraries licensing (was Fedora Core 2 wishlists)

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Adam Debus wrote:

>
>     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.

What you are mentioning is almost true about *LGPL*, not GPL.
Fortunately glibc is LGPLed.  If it was GPLed, yes, you could not
run anything non-GPL-compatible.

> Thanks,
>
> Adam Debus
> Network Engineer, ReachONE Internet
> adam at reachone.com