[gnome-db] Using MySQL in LGPL library

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

Hi

We have been supporting MySQL in the GNOME-DB project
(http://www.gnome-db.org) since the beginning almost (1998). GNOME-DB
provides several liraries, and one of those is a plugin-based generic
data access library (libgda) which allows access to several DBMS, by
dlopen'ing the plugins. Each of those plugins provide access to a
specific RDBMS.

The library (libgda) is LGPL, so it seems we are not able to have it
link against the GPL version of MySQL.

So, we have been thinking about what to do, and so far we only see 3
possibilities:

* force libgda to link against the LGPL MySQL libraries, but I suppose
there won't be any 4.x LGPL libraries, right?
* have the MySQL plugin communicate with the library via local
sockets/message queues/whatever so that we don't link to it directly.
* completely remove support for MySQL, which, for obvious reasons, we'd
prefer to avoid.

So far, we have disabled MySQL access in the CVS version until we know
what to do.

Do you have any advice on what to do? What are other GPL-incompatible
projects doing?

[Please CC me since I'm not on the list]

cheers