On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Claudio Cicali wrote:
> Jean-Michel POURE wrote:
> >
> > By free, we also mean that a product is developed by a community of people,
> > not a company raising funds. MySQL AB is mainly backed-up by investors. When
> > all this money is burnt-away, this will be the end of it.
>
> You can't say what YOU mean with "free". In this context "free" is what is
> licensed under GPL or GPL-compatible licenses.
>
> MySQL, as a *product*, it's not free as you argue. Ok. But MySQL as simple
> "software", is free. You can get the whole source and begin "forking" as you
> like. This is enough for me, and for anyone pondering "licensing" problems
> while choosing a dbms for her company.
You isn't quite right here. This does not fix the licensing issues, since
you would still be wholly bound by the GPL. I.e. all the code you write
that connects to MySQL would therefore have to be GPL'd. I.e. it does
nothing to fix the licensing problems that have been brought up.