The one paragraph I have found that sticks out to me is this one (http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/opensource-license.html):
"Free use for those who never copy, modify or distribute. As long as you never distribute the MySQL Software in any way, you are free to use it for powering your application, irrespective of whether your application is under GPL license or not."
I get the feeling that the GPL restrictions (at least in MySQL's case) are meant for those who are taking the database and specializing it for their business (by altering or extending the source code) not just merely using it to power the data access layer of a site architecture (or even a desktop application with an embedded model -- but it depends on what they mean by "distribute"; On another note, what if you had a proprietary "system" that used a central MySQL server, but was meant to be set up on many small networks?). To me that paragraph means you can build a proprietary application that "uses MySQL as the database" without having to buy a commercial license from MySQL.
You might say "that's obvious", but it seems to me like MySQL has been moving toward a more restrictive model lately . . .
Someone please correct me if you understand their policy differently.
Erik
Dave Newton wrote:
Fogleson, Allen wrote:
"These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and
can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works."
From: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem
"However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software alongside your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make sure that the free and non-free programs communicate at arms length, that they are not combined in a way that would make them effectively a single program.
The difference between this and "incorporating" the GPL-covered software is partly a matter of substance and partly form. The substantive part is this: if the two programs are combined so that they become effectively two parts of one program, then you can't treat them as two separate programs. So the GPL has to cover the whole thing.
If the two programs remain well separated, like the compiler and the kernel, or like an editor and a shell, then you can treat them as two separate programs--but you have to do it properly. The issue is simply one of form: how you describe what you are doing. Why do we care about this? Because we want to make sure the users clearly understand the free status of the GPL-covered software in the collection."
From: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
" If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed to run linked together in a shared address space, that almost surely means combining them into one program."
Like Craig says, this is an interesting issue with Java (and, I guess, shared libraries in general). And it's _still_ never been clear to me what, exactly, it means with regards to web applications.
Dave
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