Hey Sid, thanks for your post. I completely agree with you, but have a question regarding the GPL virality.
- The very first problem here is that MySQL is under the GPL license. GPL is a viral license, meaning that anything that uses anything with the GPL license, must be under the GPL or a GPL conform license. Furthermore, GPL requires you to open source your source code. If someone asks for your source code, you have to give it to them, free of charge. This also goes when you use a dynamically linked library, like, for example: mysql.dll. If you link against it, your source code must be under the GPL, if it isn't, you can be sued. Like, really, in a court.
Are you sure code linking against mysql.dll would need to be GPL too? Wouldn't this mean web applications (like PHP scripts using mysqli or Ruby apps utilizing mysql2) were also affected? What did I miss here?
Thank you
