MySQL 4

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 6 Oct 2004, Thomas Zehetbauer wrote:
> This has become a Very Frequenty Asked Question here.
> 
> Starting with version 4 MySQL AB has changed the license to be pure GPL
> as is most open source software shipping with RedHat/Fedora. In this
> case the RedHat folks however came up with the lame excuse that this
> license does no longer permit linking with PHP. But as several people
> have brought up it is PHP's license that needs to be fixed in this case.

What exactly needs to be fixed in the PHP license?

> MySQL AB has been made aware of that problem and changed their license
> to include an exception for Free and Open Source Software. RedHat has
> thereafter claimed that they need to wait for a new version to be
> released because the tarballs still included only the GPL license.

Yes, this is the correct procedure.  The software you distribute is under 
the license included with it.  You don't distribute a program that is not 
GPL just because its authors say they will GPL it in the near future.  Red 
Hat Legal also looked over the new license and had some issues with it.

> On September 10, 2004 MySQL AB has finally released MySQL 4.0.21 under
> the new license and Alan Cox has claimed that "it may well make 
> FC4 then". Unfortunately nothing has happened since that day and we are
> still stuck building the MySQL, perl-DBD-mysql and php-mysql packages
> ourselves.

Evidentally, Legal still has some issues with the "exception clause" that 
MySQL AB put in to overcome the above issues.  There are previous mails 
about this on either fedora-test-list or fedora-devel-list.  Look for a 
thread on MySQL on September 10th, the day it was released.  Its quite a 
long discussion.

The point is, you don't go blindly including software just because 
somebody says "oh, its all right now, everything is fine."  You include 
software because it actually passes The Test.  I'm not a lawyer.  You're 
not a lawyer (probably).  I am completely unqualified to interpret the 
MySQL AB license + exception clause.  Evidentally, Some Lawyers Have 
Problems with said clause, but we need a little more explanation why from 
Red Hat Legal.  I think some of it is in that thread I mentined above.

Dan