> >Now, if you don't mind using the ODBC connector, you're scott free.
> >but you WILL be bound by the GPL, and the GPL (not MySQL's interpretation,
> >just the GPL in general) being applied to connect libs seriously limits
> >your ability to distribute code, since you'd have to GPL your own code
> >if you distributed it outside your own private organization.
>
> So are you saying that if you connect to any GPL database (e.g. gnumed
> is a GPL database created with Postgresql), you must GPL your code?
The above only talks about the relationship between the license
of the connection libraries used on the client side in some
frontend code and the license of that frontend code. Any driver
can connect to PostgreSQL regardless of the driver's license.
But software that wants to *incorporate* the *driver*, say,
load it as a Python DB-API module is bound to comply with the
license of the driver. So, GnuMed has to be GPL if it wants to
use pyPgSQL which happens to be a GPL Python DB-API driver for
PostgreSQL.
What you seem to be asking, though, is whether I as a GnuMed
developer can say "No, you cannot connect to our GPL *schema*
unless your connection application is also GPL." Interesting.
Common Sense says "No, I can't do that." But Common Sense
also ponders why.
Myself, personally, as a GnuMed developer, don't really feel
inclined to think that I can stop you from connecting a
commercial application to "our" schema. I would prefer
cooperation.
> Even when using something like ODBC as the connection method?
No, see above.
Karsten Hilbert, MD
GnuMed i18n coordinator
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