When are you required to have a commercial MySQL license?
As you may know, MySQL has a dual-licensing model. You can get the source under the GPL version 2, or you can buy a commercial license.
I’ve recently been hearing a lot of confusion about when you have to buy a commercial license. People I’ve spoken to wrongly believe that they’re required to purchase a license if they’re going to use MySQL in anything but a not-for-profit business, for example. I don’t know how these notions get started, but they do.
So when are you required to buy a commercial license? It’s very simple: when you want to do something with MySQL that the GPL doesn’t permit.
I am not a lawyer, and you should do your own legal research, but misinterpretation of the GPL is rampant and I think I should try to counteract the misinformation about it if I can. Note that in this article I will use the word “Free” very carefully, as used by the Free Software Foundation. If you do not know what Free Software is, you should learn.
Here are some things the GPL allows:
- The GPL allows you to run a for-profit business on MySQL.
- The GPL allows you to modify the MySQL source code in any way you want.
- The GPL allows you to sell MySQL.
- The GPL allows you to redistribute MySQL.
- The GPL allows you to redistribute your modifications of MySQL.
And you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission or pay anyone for the right to do this. Are you shocked? You shouldn’t be.
The above come with some restrictions, but those restrictions are (broadly speaking) only to prevent you from making the software less Free. So, for example, if you sell or redistribute, you have to do it under the GPL too. You cannot strip the GPL or encumber part of the software and then pass on a less-Free version of the software to others.
Here are some things the GPL does not require:
- The GPL doesn’t require you to redistribute your modifications to MySQL.
- The GPL doesn’t require you to GPL-license any software that merely connects to MySQL.
- The GPL doesn’t require you to GPL-license all the software in your company.
So if you have to buy a commercial license for things the GPL doesn’t permit, what are those? Here are a couple of scenarios I can think of.
- You need a commercial license if you want to modify MySQL and redistribute the result as non-Free software.
- You need a commercial license if you want to embed MySQL within your non-Free program. Note that embed is not the same as “make a connection to.”
Since these things are not permitted under the GPL, you need to buy the right to use the MySQL source code under a non-GPL license. That’s where the dual-licensing comes in.
MySQL is very careful in their marketing materials. So far I cannot recall hearing anyone from MySQL say that you have to have a commercial license for some purpose that doesn’t require it. Sometimes they say things like “MySQL Enterprise is for people who want to make money with MySQL.” This marketing message may be unclear to a person who doesn’t know the freedoms guaranteed by Free Software licenses (i.e. it may leave them with the false impression they have to pay for MySQL if they want to use it to make a profit). But such people can always learn the truth by spending the few minutes necessary to educate themselves about the wonderful freedoms guaranteed by the GPL.
My lists above are just short samples. For examples and demonstrative text that will help clarify the GPL further, you should read the GPL FAQ.
Hi!
Nice post. I too like the GPL. One thing caught my eye though. Baron, I am sure you know this, but for the benefit of your readers, allow me to clarify this point
“The GPL doesn’t require you to GPL-license any software that merely connects to MySQL.”
In itself, this is true. Note however that the “Connectors” (such as the ODBC, JDBC and OLE DB Drivers) – the software that your applications use to connect to MySQL may be GPL licensed. This is at least the case for those maintained and distributed by MySQL.
So, although your app can *connect* to MySQL using such a driver, you *cannot* bundle such a driver with your application and distribute that (unless your software as also GPL licensed).
In practice this is not a problem as long as you have a way to help your clients download the driver and install it themselves.
HTH,
Roland
Roland Bouman
17 Feb 09 at 5:03 pm
Hi Baron,
Nice explanatory post. As Roland says, connecting to MySQL is a tricky business. According to the GPL FAQ,
“If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any program which uses it has to be under the GPL?
Yes, because the program as it is actually run includes the library.”
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#TOCIfLibraryIsGPL
So, if an application distributed under a non GPL license needs any of the client libraries released under the GPL, a commercial license is necessary. I am not a lawyer either, but this looks fair to me.
If you develop your own client library from scratch, you shouldn’t need a license in the above case.
And just to be completely fair, the client libraries distributed with MySQL 3.23 (and perhaps 4.0, I am not sure) were released with the LGPL. From version 4.1, the client libraries are under the GPL.
Cheers
Giuseppe
Giuseppe Maxia
17 Feb 09 at 5:19 pm
Hi Baron, Roland, and Giuseppe,
There is actually more to the client licensing. Take a look at the EXCEPTIONS-CLIENT file in the MySQL source code. Basically, if any program is released under one of the listed FLOSS licenses (BSD, Apache, PHP, …), even if they are not compatible with GPL, it is ok. You only need a commercial license for the client libraries when you need to bundle them with non-FLOSS applications (not just non-GPL).
Instead, you could find a BSD-licensed client library implementation, or write your own.
Eric Day
17 Feb 09 at 6:50 pm
I think Debian maintained the older LGPL connectors for a while for this exact reason (not sure if they still do).
Some other parts of MySQL are not under GPL as well, such as the manual and man pages – but the license is not too restrictive. See:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/mysql-dfsg-5.0/+bug/121441/+viewstatus
There will be an alternative for PHP Applications soon, with mysqlnd being released under the PHP License (which has more freedom than GPL).
Morgan Tocker
17 Feb 09 at 8:35 pm
I think the confusion arises because people call it a “commercial” license. That makes it sound like you need the license for commercial purposes.
I call it a “license” and say “basically you only need it if mysql is embedded in your software.” Perhaps we should call it an “embedded” license?
Sheeri K. Cabral
17 Feb 09 at 10:42 pm
[...] When are you required to have a commercial MySQL license? at Xaprb (tags: mysql gpl legal) February 17th 2009 Posted to Links [...]
links for 2009-02-17 | .:: a few thoughts on the subject by rob wright ::.
17 Feb 09 at 11:04 pm
Eric,
Yes. My bad. I should have said a “non-FOSS” instead of a “non-GPL” application. I should know, since I use a non-GPL (but FOSS) driver on a daily basis!
To say it in simpler terms: if I want to distribute a client application for MySQL without providing the source code, then I need a commercial license, even if I give away the binaries for free.
Giuseppe
Giuseppe Maxia
18 Feb 09 at 2:39 am
Giuseppe,
even if you don’t bundle the MySQL libraries yourself?
Roland Bouman
18 Feb 09 at 5:52 am
Yes, Guiseppe, I’m interested in the answer to Roland’s question as well.
To be more specific: if one distributes a client application but gets the client to (a) download the MySQL server and (b) download the connector libraries, is this considered “bundling”?
fenway
18 Feb 09 at 7:23 am
So, is “merely connecting to MySQL” not requiring a licence? I my would not be so sure about that not being the case, based on this answer in the GPL v2 FAQ:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#TOCMereAggregation
And specifically this sentence:
“But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program.”
To me, the MySQL Client communication protocol is both intimate, complex and internal, in difference to, say, FTP or HTTP.
That means that if there are two programs that connect using “complex internal data structures” they can well be considered “on program”, and the GPL would be void if one part of that “program” use a closed source license.
And to be clear here, I will leave it to others to implement the GPL, I’m not a license police, I just want to be clear with the message.
Also note that the “exchange of complex data structures” happens independently if the non-GPL application use the MySQL Client library or not.
Anders Karlsson
18 Feb 09 at 7:41 am
It’s unfortunate that there is still confusion over this. However it is not something recent, this is in issue that has been going on for a long time. At one point MySQL themselves were to blame for this, giving very conflicting signals about what they considered a requirement for commercial licensing.
Joseph Scott
18 Feb 09 at 2:21 pm
Joseph is quite right; MySQL often gave conflicting and downright wrong information about when licenses were required, with scary overtones of lawsuits for those who didn’t get on board.
Take a look at an old version of their license page[1], which explained different scenarios where you would need a commercial license, specifically the paragraph
“If you develop and distribute a commercial application and as part of utilizing your application, the end-user must download a copy of MySQL; for each derivative work, you (or, in some cases, your end-user) need a commercial license for the MySQL server and/or MySQL client libraries.”
That is broad enough to have been interpreted as any php code that uses mysql_connect requiring a commercial license (since it cannot run without mysql)… Or alternatively this line:
“If you distribute MySQL Software within your organization, you should purchase a commercial license.”
which is flat out not true. Now, I think they have gotten a lot better about this type of thing; I don’t see too many recent statements / postings / responses that go this far. While I still hear stories about Sun reps telling people that any sale of their application requires a mysql license, these are usually from some guy talking about his friend in a random blog post, so I don’t give it too much stock, but there is little doubt that MySQL’s earlier statements on this topic are what lead to the current state of affairs.
[1]http://web.archive.org/web/20040624084942/http://www.mysql.com/products/licensing/commercial-license.html)
Robert Treat
18 Feb 09 at 5:32 pm
Robert,
By quoting old versions of the policy you aren’t doing anyone a favor. That wording was wrong, and it was changed as soon as I (who was not an employee at that time) pointed out the mistake.
As for the message, I believe it’s clear for everyone using FOSS. If your application uses the GPL or any other license covered by the FOSS exception, you don’t have to worry. That case is covered and understood.
The bitchy part is when you want to link the GPL library to a non-free client.
The question is not “Do you need a MySQL commercial license?”
The right question is “Would you violate the GPL in this case?”
If the answer is ‘yes’ and you want to avoid releasing your client under the GPL, then you should buy a commercial license. Not because MySQL says so, but because your application is not GPL compliant.
The answer to the question is in the GPL FAQ.
Giuseppe
Giuseppe Maxia
19 Feb 09 at 3:04 pm
Giuseppe,
Baron says he does not understand where the confusion comes from, and doesn’t recall hearing people at MySQL ever say these confusing things. If I post saying “oh yes, they used to say stuff like that”, I think maybe he and casual readers will question whether I am making things up. (Baron and I may have met briefly and exchanged a few emails, but we’ve never shared a meal or even a beer, so…) In this case I think posting a link is helpful, if only to verify that I am not making this up. And while I appreciate that the message coming from Sun/MySQL has changed (I did say that), the paragraph about “if your app requires customer to download MySQL you must buy a license” was on that page for *years*. (Though I could, this time I will not post a link, I hope you will take my word ;-) ).
Robert Treat
20 Feb 09 at 9:02 am
Hi
Can u plz help me in this matter?
I am a fresher software developer. I have a simple question ,
I have application that will use mysql as back end to store data. The application will not be available for free use.
So do I need any license for that?
Parag
10 Sep 09 at 4:30 am
Anyone have an answer to Parag question above?
Hank
27 Oct 09 at 10:44 am
Hank, Parag — commercial, closed software can use MySQL as a backend, as long as it’s not *distributed with* MySQL.
So basically you have to instruct your customers to download MySQL independently of your software.
Sheeri K. Cabral
27 Oct 09 at 11:42 am
Can anybody answer fenway question above?
Mark Shehata
28 Dec 09 at 11:02 pm
Hi!
Help me too plz!
If I would like to develop a commercial boxed app, which uses only MYSQL for data storage, and the app would be definitely not open source, only capable of working with MySQL connection, but I would show a video-demo to the users how to download the MySQL-server from the official page.. so should I by commercial licence?
Thank You!
Laslie
25 Jan 10 at 1:44 am
I am not going to answer any questions about another company’s licensing. You would be a fool to take my advice anyway. Hire a lawyer already if you can’t understand the GPL.
Xaprb
25 Jan 10 at 9:27 am
[Redacted by blog owner.]
MSG
29 Jan 10 at 3:27 pm
The contents of the previous comment were removed, because they gave very specific legal advice AND looked like a blatant promotion for MySQL Network, etc (because they were copied from a mysql.com web page). I’m not comfortable with that on a website I own and control, regardless of whether I wrote it myself or not. Anyone else who wants to post such content, please link to it instead.
Xaprb
29 Jan 10 at 3:56 pm
If I develop a SAAS application for which I charge a monthly fee, do I need a commercial license to use MySQL?
Phil McIntosh
2 Mar 10 at 9:14 am
This article and its comments are worth reading.
http://krow.livejournal.com/684068.html
Xaprb
2 Mar 10 at 10:34 am
So if I ask MySQL directly they will probably tell me I need a commercial license, lots of people will disagree, we don’t know yet what the current owners of MySQL will do, and Monty hopes they’ll be jerks so people will throw money at him to keep developing a new “free” fork. Postgres it is…
Phil McIntosh
2 Mar 10 at 11:08 am
Phil — no, that is not correct.
The only time you, as an application developer, has to worry about licensing is if you are *distributing* MySQL. So if you are selling SAAS software that *includes* MySQL, then you either need to:
0) bundle them separately, ie, “download our product here, and download MySQL here.” This is free, as long as you redistribute MySQL with its full GPL license, etc. Your software can be closed.
1) embed MySQL in your software and pay the embedded license. In this case, your software can be closed and MySQL can be bundled together and transparent to the user (ie, 1 install installs your software and mysql).
If you have a service that you sell that uses a MySQL *backend* that YOU OWN (ie, you are *not* distributing copies of MySQL) then you don’t need a license.
Basically the GPLv2 says “you can’t redistribute MySQL unless it’s open and GPLv2.” The dual-licensing is to be able to have embedded MySQL in products without violating the GPLv2 — embedded MySQL is *not* GPLv2, so you have to pay for it.
Hopefully that makes it clear.
Sheeri K. Cabral
2 Mar 10 at 11:21 am
@Phil — Baron said it well in his post — although he used “Free” when he meant “GPLv2 open source”:
* You need a commercial license if you want to modify MySQL and redistribute the result as non-Free software.
* You need a commercial license if you want to embed MySQL within your non-Free program. Note that embed is not the same as “make a connection to.”
(Also, you need a commericial license if you want to redistribute MySQL as part of non-GPLv2 software, even if you don’t modify it — if you just redistribute it without modification in a non-GPLv2 package, you need to pay.)
Sheeri K. Cabral
2 Mar 10 at 11:47 am
@Sheeri, I think your approach and legal advice is wrong. I would recommend to Phil that if he wants to know Oracle/MySQL’s opinion on whether he needs a license for an SAAS business, he should contact Oracle/MySQL’s legal department.
Your advice “0) bundle them separately, ie, “download our product here, and download MySQL here.”” has been brought up before, and both MySQL and the FSF have postured in the past that such an arrangement would violate the GPL (the idea is it violates the “spirit” if not the letter, hence gpl3) if the software in question could not run without MySQL (ie. if you swap in another database, the application won’t work). Now, I tend to agree with your assessment that this should be legally ok, but I couldn’t cite case law to argue that with, so you are taking a gamble not just that you would lose, but that your successful SAAS business might get sued if Oracle/MySQL determines there is money to be made from it.
So again, I would recommend to everyone, email Oracle/MySQL legal, get something official from them, and then make decisions based on what’s in the best interest of your company.
Robert Treat
4 Mar 10 at 12:48 pm
@Robert, I emailed MySQL just after Sheeri’s post. They replied with questions (which I answered) but so far no actual ANSWER…which leads me to wonder, even if I get an answer, will it still apply a year from now? You would think that with all the talk about SAAS taking over the software industry (at least until the First Great Internet Outage;-)there would be a public policy statement on this subject.
Phil McIntosh
4 Mar 10 at 3:59 pm
@Baron — you mean like this?
http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/oem/
Which specifically says what I did:
“distributors that combine and distribute commercially licensed software with MySQL software and do not wish to distribute the source code for the commercially licensed software under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (the “GPL”) must enter into a commercial license agreement with Sun.”
I’m not going to spread FUD based on past “posturing” or future speculation. I’m going to spread information by pointing to what is out there, and I think people expect that you will too.
Sheeri K. Cabral
4 Mar 10 at 5:30 pm
Oof, my last comment meant to address Phil, not baron :)
Sheeri K. Cabral
4 Mar 10 at 5:36 pm
Heh, I figured :-)
Xaprb
4 Mar 10 at 5:38 pm
I came here asking for information, and I still do not see a consensus on what is the correct interpretation for a SAAS situation – some posters agree with your interpretation and some don’t, and both sides present reasonable arguments for their positions. I would hope that SAAS vendors would be treated like ISPs who provide MySQL as part of web hosting, but I would like to KNOW that, not guess or hope. Even contacting MySQL directly I still do not have an answer.
Phil McIntosh
4 Mar 10 at 6:13 pm
In my opinion you are much better off reading about your rights on fsf.org than asking someone who has a financial interest in the outcome. If I were you, I’d even go so far as to hire a lawyer before I’d ask MySQL to interpret the GPL to me.
Xaprb
5 Mar 10 at 12:13 am
Finally got an answer from MySQL: “Yes, you can use the community version of MySQL for this project.”
Didn’t get that email until I sent them one telling them I had already converted the project to PostgreSQL (which took less time than getting answer on the license issue).
New disclaimer line: “No lawyers were enriched in the making of this product.” Feel free to use it whenever, wherever and however you wish. No rights reserved.
Phil McIntosh
5 Mar 10 at 2:58 pm
Hi guys,
I have read whole forum and I am not really sure whether I should use commercial license for my purpose.
Here is the situation:
I want to make MySQL parser which should be used in C# application. I couldn’t found any grammar which would describe MySQL. After a couple of hours searching I found that grammar is best described in sql_yacc.yy which can be found in source code. So I was thinking that I could modify that file, generate C code from it and then make a C# wrapper. But if I will modify it and use it from my software I have to buy commercial license is that right? But if that file is only existing description of MySQL grammar then I am thinking about it like it is “document which describe grammar” so I would say if i modify it and generate code it does not have to be udner GPL (because I only needed grammar which would describe MySQL).
Thanks for advise.
Dusan Hudecek
Dusan Hudecek
13 Jul 10 at 8:45 am
Well explained. I am a student and today we had some talk about Oracle buying MySQL and some of my classmates where very smart about how MySQL must be paid for license from now on and so forth. I wasnt shure about a whole thing but somehow it did not seemed possible to require paid license (just for using) for so widely used dbms.
Thanks for clearing things up for me. I hate when people get smart even if they dont know what they are talking about :)
izdelava internetne strani
14 Oct 10 at 3:00 pm
Nice write up. Just for fun, I would like to throw out there that saying, “I am not a lawyer” doesn’t actually void unauthorized practice of law. Informing someone of their rights is considered “legal advice.” Technically, I think you’d still be in violation of UPL, despite the “I am not a lawyer” line. But that’s all nor here or there.
Mufasa
3 Mar 11 at 5:17 pm
Hello guys, I have a question:
I want to create a free application (it can be a site or a desktop application), that just connects to mysql database in a web server (any shared host) to stores its data. Do I need to buy a license or publish my source code? Or can I do that without releasing my source code and not buying a license?
Thanks for your time
Bruno
15 Jul 11 at 6:03 pm
Hi guys, I have a question about MySQL connector/J 5.1
The company I work for wants to upgrade from the commercial version of 5.1.14 to the latest version. How do we do that now? The only thing we want is the connector. Our end customers already have MySQL.
John
13 Oct 11 at 10:33 pm
“Hire a lawyer already if you can’t understand the GPL.”
This is the biggest problem I have with GPL software, including MySQL. Of course you can’t understand the GPL. It’s incredibly confusing, even for lawyers. Don’t believe me? I’ve asked 3 different lawyers for opinions in our corporate counsel and gotten 3 different answers.
Additionally, your average small software developer doesn’t have the money to hire a lawyer to make sure he’s staying on the right side of the GPL. Who does? Corporations. But corporations are often so scared of accidentally subjecting their private code to GPL that they flat refuse to use any GPL code. This also prevents them from having their enormously talented engineers contribute back to the GPL code, so the software world loses out.
In short, a lot of GPL software is useless. Unless you just use it and hope nobody notices – which a lot of small developers do.
Bah…far too much headache. For that reason, my databases are PostgreSQL and I try as hard as I can to only use Open Source software that has a permissive license like MIT/BSD. I’m sure that opinion will be unpopular with some, but it’s the track I’ve taken and it makes it easier to sleep at night.
Wade
5 Jan 12 at 7:09 pm
I too have grown really tired of that aspect of the GPL. The problem is it’s not just a license, it’s a manifesto and an ethics/morality lecture.
Xaprb
5 Jan 12 at 9:45 pm
@ Wade
I fully agree with you it gives me a headache.
What does the community think about those three stepped options?
1/make LGPL or even totally free the software module connecting to MySQL.
2/Maybe even provide it distinctively
3/Maybe even provide it only in source and compile it on the user platform.
thx.
Manu
6 Jan 12 at 11:14 am
I have a question regarding the other editions of Mysql (enterprise, standard etc..). If the code in the community edition was used as a basis for making those editions, and it clearly was, wouldn’t that make those editions inherit the GPL license and thus make them free as well.
Based on the downloads process on the oracle/mysql web site and the ‘trial’ process you have to go through to even get one of those editions, this does not appear to be the case.
What am I missing in the GPL licensing schema? How did those editions transition to paid for versions.
JeffR
11 Jan 12 at 8:35 pm
What you are missing is the Contributor License Agreement, which gave them the right to dual-license external contributions.
Xaprb
13 Jan 12 at 12:39 pm
Is there ever a right time to buy the Enterprise license if you are not distributing mysql or changing the source? As a heavy corporate consumer is there a benefit or set of features you get when you buy the Enterprise?
Kevin
2 Apr 12 at 3:12 pm
Hi,
Reading this article, it seems somebody who develops a close Application which uses MySQL wouldn’t need to buy a MySQL license if it doesn’t include MySQL into its install program; but if you read this Web,
http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing//commercial-license.html
you can see this sentence: If you develop and distribute a commercial application and as part of utilizing your application, the end-user must download a copy of MySQL; for each derivative work, you (or, in some cases, your end-user) need a commercial license for the MySQL server and/or MySQL client libraries.
So, it does not talk about if the Application includes or not MySQL, just the fact that if it needs MySQL to work, you should by a licence.
You say I only need to buy a comercial MySQL licence if I want to modify and redistribute it as non-Free software or if I embed it within my non-Free program. But which point in the GPL license guide you to that conclusion? Could you show us the exact sentence?
Best regards
Virginia Martinez
5 Jun 12 at 3:50 am
@VirginiaM
The problem is that you have to include MySQL client code in order to connect to the server.
Oracle is abusing the intent of the GPL to protect a proprietary client/server interface, which they then use to demand licensing fees.
If you use compiled code you are basically required to use their code, and therefor the license of their choice.
This license hack is not particularly robust, If you distribute proprietary byte compiled java with jdbc hooks, but no included driver, you have no license/copyright obligation to Oracle at all. The end user can then chose to add the mysql(or some other) jdbc driver. Since the GPL allows the end user to do anything as long as you don’t redistribute code/binaries the end user does not need a license form Oracle either.
dgandhi
14 Jun 12 at 4:05 pm
This is an old thread and I have gotten tired of GPL discussions. But it is worth pointing out that there are many more ways to connect to MySQL servers than using the official GPL’ed client libraries. The MySQL client-server protocol is not particularly complex, and it is not very hard to write an implementation of it. One example is the BSD library from the Drizzle project, libdrizzle.
Xaprb
14 Jun 12 at 4:22 pm
Dear Dgandhi and Xaprb,
So, if we need to buy or not a MySQL License depends on the way our Software connects to the database engine; but we don’t use Java, our Software is developed in Borland Delphi and we use this third-party component to connect to MySQL,
http://www.devart.com/dbx/mysql/
this driver works with MySQL directly without involving MySQL client library.
If I understood well, as the driver connects directly, we wouldn’t require to buy a MySQL Licence, is it right?
Thanks very much for you help.
Virginia Martinez
18 Jun 12 at 3:16 am
Dear Dgandhi and Xaprb,
Help me please, nobody has solved me this question and this’s very very important for me… please.
best regards,
Virginia Martinez
27 Jun 12 at 2:18 am
Hi guys, I am still little bit confused of the GPL. Can someone advise my case? For instance, I am developing my own application and connect it MYSQL at local machine. If i distribute my app and MYSQL setup in DVD software as product. Would i required to pay for Mysql license for this?
yoon poh
2 Aug 12 at 10:44 am
Hi.
I was very happy when I found this article essentially saying that my application that mearly connects to a mysql instance , does not require a commercial licence if my software is not GPL.
However, Oracle seems to think different.
Here is an excerpt from their reply when presented with this scenario: (specifically note the items marked with **)
Typical examples of MySQL distribution include:
· Selling software that includes MySQL to customers who install the software on their own machines.
**· Selling software that requires customers to install MySQL themselves on their own machines.
· Building a hardware system that includes MySQL and selling that hardware system to customers for installation at their own locations.
Specifically:
· If you include the MySQL server with an application that is not licensed under the GPL or GPL-compatible license, you need a commercial license for the MySQL server.
**· If you develop and distribute a commercial application and as part of utilizing your application, the end-user must download a copy of MySQL; for each derivative work, you need a commercial license for the MySQL server and/or MySQL client libraries.
**· If you include one or more of the MySQL drivers in your non-GPL application (so that your application can run with MySQL), you need a commercial license for the driver(s) in question. The MySQL drivers currently include an ODBC driver, a JDBC driver and the C language library.
Pieter
27 Sep 12 at 10:23 am