[gdal-dev] Licensing Policy for drivers and applications

[Even Rouault]

Le dimanche 30 janvier 2011 18:00:19, Frank Warmerdam a écrit :

> > b) For MySQL, it depends on whether you use the open source version (GPL)
> > or the commercial version.
> 
> Really?  I had assumed that the client libraries would have been
> under a non-reciprocal license even if the database server itself
> was GPLed. 

Actually, I've just researched a bit, and the situation is more complicated 
than what I thought with their fun "GPL License with a FLOSS Exception". See 
http://mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/index.html and 
http://mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/foss-exception/

My understanding of it is that if GDAL is used by an application complying 
with a FLOSS licence, it must not necessarily comply with the GPL. But if the 
application is commercial, it must comply with the GPL... 

So if using the GPL licenced mysql, the mysql driver should be marked as 
NONRECIPROCAL if GDAL_APPLICATION_LICENSE_POLICY  = RECIPROCAL or DEFAULT, but 
it should be marked as RECIPROCAL if GDAL_APPLICATION_LICENSE_POLICY  = 
PROPRIETARY. But I'm not sure we want this RFC to take into account all these 
complicated licence terms and make the DMD_LICENSE_POLICY depend on the 
GDAL_APPLICATION_LICENSE_POLICY ...

>  I wonder if there is a way of determining the license
> configuration at runtime or from the include files.

Actually I see that /usr/include/mysql/mysql_version.h declares

#ifndef LICENSE
#define LICENSE                         GPL
#endif /* LICENSE */

so that should be possible at build time.

> 
> > * As far as ODBC, PGEO, MSSQLSPATIAL (and GEOMEDIA in trunk), it depends
> > on the actual ODBC library... On unix, unixODBC is LGPL.
> 
> That could be hard to establish.  I'm still unclear on what we will
> do here.

On Windows, I think that the actual license of the odbc library doesn't really 
count as people won't distribute the windows odbc system library right ? 
Otherwise it would make it impossible to distribute GPL software on Windows 
since the system windows libraries cannot comply with the GPL. A bit confused 
here...