[wellylug] Writing commercial apps which connect to GPL software.

[Nigel Walters]

Stephen,

Thanks for the reply.

The problem is that my friends applications are Visual Basic program
written to MS Office api's. Now the actual connection to MySQL would be
via a GPL'ed ODBC link with proprietary MS Office.

My reading of the GPL tells me that since MySQL is not necessary to my
friends applications (it could be replaced by any ODBC compliant
database) we should be okay....but the MySQL site while going into some
detail on the link previously given seems to deliberately blur the
ground over what is permissable.

(http://www.mysql.com/products/licensing.html).

For example (from the above link)

1.) Free to those who are 100% GPL 
Well MS Office is proprietary and my friend may not be able to GPL his
programs.

2)Free to those who never copy, modify or distribute.
Well, he would really need to distribute an unchanged version of MySQL
(perhaps configured with his preferred settings)

3) Commercial use for anyone else.


>From the perspective of the GPL it is the term 'link with' that counts.
Does use of an ODBC link count to trigger the GPL licence requirement
for connecting programs? 


Do you see the problem ? 


Thanks for any help.
regards
Nigel



On Sun, 2003-03-30 at 16:27, Stephen Judd wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 22:22, Nigel Walters wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > 
> > I wonder if anyone has an opinion.
> > 
> > A friend of mine has started to be interested in using open source
> > products. He is looking to reduce costs for his customers. He is a
> > technical write who also uses Visual Basic to write applications with
> > the Microsoft Office suite.
> > 
> > 
> > Now often his clients have MS Office without MS Access. Instead of
> > advising them to upgrade and buy Access he would like to be able to
> > write his application in Visual Basic and use an ODBC link to MySQL (or
> > another GPL'ed database)
> > 
> > 
> > Reading of the MySql licence page would seem to imply that he would run
> > into difficulties doing this !!??
> 
> What difficulties, specifically? I don't see any...
>  
-- 
Nigel Walters <lizh at ihug.co.nz>


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get 128 Bit SSL Encryption!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/xaxhjB/hdqFAA/VygGAA/0XFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

  .-.   Wellington
  /V\   Linux
 // \\  Users       
/(   )\ Group
 ^^-^^
        http://wlug.paradise.net.nz/

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wellylug-unsubscribe at egroups.com
  

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/