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Daniel Beardsley
Asked: 2010-05-01 19:06:29 +0800 CST

Are licenses for OSS required when purchasing hosting? [duplicate]

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Possible Duplicate:
Can you help me with my software licensing question?

I'm a developer and while working on a project a question came up about licensing.

The web application I'm working on will be closed source and we are looking at a few different hosting providers. Are commercial licenses required for using software released under GPL (i.e MySQL)? Or does the hosting provider take care of that?

mysql licensing hosting

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I have used and worked with many hosting providers and have never had to pay for a separate MySQL license for usage of that. A hosting company may or may not have a commercial license for MySQL, but I can't think of an instance where I ever paid for such a thing separately. Even in a dedicated host environment I've not seen that for MySQL. Now, SQL Server is another story, and depending on the hosting environment, you may be paying for such a license. But SQL Server is commercial non-OSS software, so it's in a different category.

    Check out Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses -- look at the sections about paying money for GPL software.

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  2. Specifically, w/ mysql, you only need a commercial license if your are embedding the mysql product or parts of it in an application you are distributing, and don't want to distribute the source.

    If you are just using the SQL interface to work w/ mysql, IIRC, you are all set to go.

    If licensing is a concern for you, you may want to consider PostgreSQL, which is a BSD-like end-to-end.

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  3. It depends.

    If you are just running the software on a server somewhere, then no, you don’t need a commercial license (this may be a provision in GPLv3, but MySQL isn’t licensed under the GPLv3).

    If you’re going to redistribute the software, then you will need one.

    If the application doesn’t require MySQL, but makes use of it if present (perhaps MySQL is one of several options, for example), and so doesn’t depend upon the MySQL client library, and doesn’t statically link with it, then you may be able to do without the commercial license (you will want to check with a specialist lawyer, though, which may cost you more than the cost of the license!)

    There are also two alternative options: use an alternative client library distributed under the terms of a different license, or write your own. There are several alternative libraries around (PHP includes one of its own, as an alternative to the module built on top of libmysqlclient for example).

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  4. In the MySQL case, yes, you're required to have the commercial license. Usually hosting companies don't include a commercial MySQL license with their plans.

    This is because the access library to MySQL is GPL, so you can't link it to any software that is not licensed in a GPL-compatible way. Including GPL software in a proprietary product is one of the few illegal ways to use it.

    This is the basis of MySQL dual-licensing revenue model. This would be completely different for PostgreSQL, as the libraries are still free software, but not licensed with a strong copyleft license like the GPL.

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