[gnome-db] Re: Using MySQL in LGPL library

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo ximian com>]

On Tue, 2003-12-16 at 02:09, Jeremy Zawodny wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 14, 2003 at 10:50:43PM +0100, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I *thought* that MySQL AB was coming up with some sort of exception
> for GPL'd free software but I don't remember if that got resolved.
>
oh, that's nice for them

> Perhaps more pressure is needed?
> 
yes, I guess if we all have to disable mysql support in our projects,
that's going to be some kind of pressure. As I said, we don't want to do
that, but if there's no solution, we'll be forced to.

Do you know any other projects in the same situation?

> I'll check with a few folks and see if I can turn up something...
> 
ok, thanks. Please keep us informed.

cheers