6 ms·

What's the difference between community and commercial customers, aside from support? Is InnoDB a feature? Why would MyISAM support be free but InnoDB support h

by jarin 16y ago

What's the difference between community and commercial customers, aside from support? Is InnoDB a feature? Why would MyISAM support be free but InnoDB support have a yearly fee?

dangrossman 16y ago
MySQL is dual-licensed. If you download the community server, it's GPL licensed. If you want to distribute MySQL as part of your application, then your application may have to be GPL licensed as well, which is often undesirable. ISVs and others that need to distribute MySQL can buy one of the commercial editions to get it under a non-GPL license. If you're worried about the future, Oracle agreed to maintain the dual-licensing strategy until at least 2015 as part of the EU negotiations before acquiring Sun.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- candeira 16y ago
  How exactly does distributing MySQL as part of your application make your application GPL as well? It's not a retorical question, can you please suggest a case? Unless you outright fork MySQL to make your own database, you can run and distribute it with your proprietary stack without being forced to license your code as GPL. The FSF call it "mere aggregation": http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
  - johnyzee 16y ago
    Here we go with the amateur legal stuff, but until a more educated comment comes up, as far as I know, it is a question of the drivers being GPL, and coding up against the drivers crosses the threshold.
    - avar 16y ago
      Not only that, but MySQL AB considered their network protocol to be GPL as well, and went after anyone who tried to make a clean-room implementation of it. I don't know whether SUN and Oracle still pursue that strategy. Otherwise you could indeed bundle MySQL with some clean-room libraries to talk to the server.
      - loewenskind 16y ago
        >and went after anyone who tried to make a clean-room implementation of it. That doesn't sound legal. You're allowed to clean-room implement anything aren't you?
        avar 16y ago
        The idea was that their network protocol was an original copyrighted work, and that any clean-room implementation of it would be a derived work. That does indeed sound crazy, but they also had piles of cash to throw at lawyers to go after anyone who challenged them, and (maybe as a result of that) nobody ever made e.g. a clean-room BSD or LGPL licensed version of the mysql library. So it never made it to court AFAIK.
        jrockway 16y ago
        A nice fiction. The reality is that copyright covers verbatim copying. If you read a book and write a review, the term "derived work" makes English sense, but not legal sense. Similarly, if you read the MySQL code looking for magic words to say to the server to get it to give you data, saying those words is not copyright infringement. It's "learning", not "copying". If anyone used MySQL, I would write a BSD-licensed API just to prove a point. (And to be non-blocking.) But the world has moved on since the Oracle deal...
        eru 16y ago
        > Similarly, if you read the MySQL code looking for magic words to say to the server to get it to give you data, saying those words is not copyright infringement. It's "learning", not "copying". What would happen, if the protocol would require sending a picture of a picture of Mickey Mouse with each request (or some copy-righted novel)?
  - shpxnvz 16y ago
    How exactly does distributing MySQL as part of your application make your application GPL as well? It doesn't. The acceptance of the GPL (as of V2, haven't read V3) for a software component does not compel you to use any particular license for your own work. You can, by distributing the GPL'd work with you own non-open software, be in violation of the license on the GPL'd work, but the repercussion is a loss of the right to distribute the GPL'd work potentially enforced by injunction, and not an automatic change of your own license as the phrase "make your application GPL as well" implies.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago
  If my PHP connects to a mysql database on the same host, and I sell that host as a product, I need to release that php code?
  - wtracy 16y ago
    If the PHP code is hosted on your server, you're not redistributing it, so the GPL doesn't affect you at all. If you are redistributing it (you ship it to your customers and they deploy it on their servers) I would find a lawyer.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jarin 16y ago
Ah ok, paying to get it under a non-GPL license makes sense.
tomjen3 16y ago
InnoDB is basically an ACID storage engine, whereas MyISAM is a storage engine that gives no guarantees about anything.
- gtdminh 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnoDB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnoDB

by jarin 16y ago

What's the difference between community and commercial customers, aside from support? Is InnoDB a feature? Why would MyISAM support be free but InnoDB support have a yearly fee?

dangrossman 16y ago

MySQL is dual-licensed. If you download the community server, it's GPL licensed. If you want to distribute MySQL as part of your application, then your application may have to be GPL licensed as well, which is often undesirable. ISVs and others that need to distribute MySQL can buy one of the commercial editions to get it under a non-GPL license. If you're worried about the future, Oracle agreed to maintain the dual-licensing strategy until at least 2015 as part of the EU negotiations before acquiring Sun.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
candeira 16y ago
How exactly does distributing MySQL as part of your application make your application GPL as well? It's not a retorical question, can you please suggest a case? Unless you outright fork MySQL to make your own database, you can run and distribute it with your proprietary stack without being forced to license your code as GPL. The FSF call it "mere aggregation": http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
- johnyzee 16y ago
  Here we go with the amateur legal stuff, but until a more educated comment comes up, as far as I know, it is a question of the drivers being GPL, and coding up against the drivers crosses the threshold.
  - avar 16y ago
    Not only that, but MySQL AB considered their network protocol to be GPL as well, and went after anyone who tried to make a clean-room implementation of it. I don't know whether SUN and Oracle still pursue that strategy. Otherwise you could indeed bundle MySQL with some clean-room libraries to talk to the server.
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      >and went after anyone who tried to make a clean-room implementation of it. That doesn't sound legal. You're allowed to clean-room implement anything aren't you?
      - avar 16y ago
        The idea was that their network protocol was an original copyrighted work, and that any clean-room implementation of it would be a derived work. That does indeed sound crazy, but they also had piles of cash to throw at lawyers to go after anyone who challenged them, and (maybe as a result of that) nobody ever made e.g. a clean-room BSD or LGPL licensed version of the mysql library. So it never made it to court AFAIK.
        jrockway 16y ago
        A nice fiction. The reality is that copyright covers verbatim copying. If you read a book and write a review, the term "derived work" makes English sense, but not legal sense. Similarly, if you read the MySQL code looking for magic words to say to the server to get it to give you data, saying those words is not copyright infringement. It's "learning", not "copying". If anyone used MySQL, I would write a BSD-licensed API just to prove a point. (And to be non-blocking.) But the world has moved on since the Oracle deal...
        eru 16y ago
        > Similarly, if you read the MySQL code looking for magic words to say to the server to get it to give you data, saying those words is not copyright infringement. It's "learning", not "copying". What would happen, if the protocol would require sending a picture of a picture of Mickey Mouse with each request (or some copy-righted novel)?
- shpxnvz 16y ago
  How exactly does distributing MySQL as part of your application make your application GPL as well? It doesn't. The acceptance of the GPL (as of V2, haven't read V3) for a software component does not compel you to use any particular license for your own work. You can, by distributing the GPL'd work with you own non-open software, be in violation of the license on the GPL'd work, but the repercussion is a loss of the right to distribute the GPL'd work potentially enforced by injunction, and not an automatic change of your own license as the phrase "make your application GPL as well" implies.
9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago
If my PHP connects to a mysql database on the same host, and I sell that host as a product, I need to release that php code?
- wtracy 16y ago
  If the PHP code is hosted on your server, you're not redistributing it, so the GPL doesn't affect you at all. If you are redistributing it (you ship it to your customers and they deploy it on their servers) I would find a lawyer.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jarin 16y ago

Ah ok, paying to get it under a non-GPL license makes sense.

tomjen3 16y ago

InnoDB is basically an ACID storage engine, whereas MyISAM is a storage engine that gives no guarantees about anything.

gtdminh 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnoDB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnoDB