Re: Humor me: Postgresql vs. MySql (esp. licensing)

In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, jb@sourceillustrated.com ("John Wells") transmitted:
> It's my opinion that we should be using PG, because of the full ACID
> support, and the license involved.  A consultant my company hired
> before bringing me in is pushing hard for MySql, citing speed and
> community support, as well as ACID support.

You should ask that consultant what he anticipates the licensing fees
will be, and why.  It seems improbable that would be cheap.

But don't bother using us as the source of questions; head to the
"horse's mouth."

<http://www.mysql.com/products/licensing.html>

And compare to...

<http://www.postgresql.org/licence.html>

> My biggest concern with MySQL is licensing.  We need to keep costs
> low, and last I remember the parent company was being pretty strict
> on "fair use" under the GPL.  If I recall, they even said a company
> would have to license the commercial version if it were simply used
> operationally within the company.

To put it in their words...

    "Our guiding principle is to have all our source code open, and to
    offer it free of payment (i.e. gratis) to those who commit to
    doing the same. We have concluded that the GPL licence best
    fulfills this principle, and that's why we use the GPL.

    Therefore the answer to (a questioner's) question is: "Your PHP
    app that works with MySQL, if distributed, will either have to be
    GPL (or another OSI-approved and MySQL-approved open source
    licence) or you will need a commercial licence of MySQL."

    Sometimes people say "But I cannot open source my application!"
    and they may have valid reasons for this. Our response is then:
    "If you have a valid reason not to be open source, wouldn't that
    same reasoning apply to us?."

    This goes to the core of MySQL AB's business idea of Quid pro Quo
    - if you are open source, we are open source - if you are closed
    source, we are commercial."

When someone proposed building an LGPLed interface to MaxDB (what they
call their acquisition of SAP-DB), the comments were also quite
illuminating:

<http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=sapdb-general&m=106045880005921&w=2>
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