GPL

[Temlakos]

Tim wrote:
> Tim:
>   
>>> "Included" in the sense of compiling that code into your own, or simply
>>> having their library file added in with your collection of files?
>>>       
>
> Rui Miguel Silva Seabra:
>   
>> Included as in the sense that without it your work is completely meaningless
>> (in the case of software not even run).
>>     
>
> To me, that argument's as silly as the computer motherboard is included
> in running a GPL program, and therefor all data about it must be
> provided.
>
> It also doesn't always hold water in all cases, you can sometimes use
> some other program routines to do the same job.  Not to mention that you
> may not need to supply the file, the user may already have it.
>
>   
All this folderol evidently came from the decision of the maintainers of 
MySQL to change their license to the GPL from the LGPL, or /Library/ 
General Public License. The latter allows you to use a library the way 
one normally uses it to build an application--so long as he does not 
modify the library itself. If he does that, then he must provide the 
code for his new library, and may not keep /that/ to himself.

PostgreSQL is under an entirely different license, one that leave no 
doubt as to the freedom of developers to build database apps that run on 
it and not release their database schemata and so on.

Add to it that PostgreSQL will keep running under the heaviest loads--a 
bit slower, but it will still run. MySQL will run at full speed until 
the load gets one bit per second too heavy--and then it will crash. 
/That/ is why I used PostgreSQL and not MySQL for an application I built 
to house medical lab cases.

Besides: I recently ported my client app to Java, and I have no evidence 
that I have to release all my source code just because I used certain 
Java objects related to the Java Data-Base Connectivity function.

Temlakos