Rainer Bauer wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>
>
>> Rainer Bauer wrote:
>>
>>> "Andrej Ricnik-Bay" wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Nov 7, 2007 2:40 PM, Rainer Bauer <usenet@munnin.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> That's nice to hear. But I respect licences as they are and the ODBCng driver
>>>>> is licenced under the GPL.
>>>>>
>>>> That doesn't mean that you're not allowed to use it with commercial
>>>> applications; it just means that you need to be happy to provide the
>>>> source for it on request.
>>>>
>>> Which is exactly the reason why the LGPL licence was created. So that any
>>> software can link against a library without the restrictions of the GPL.
>>>
>> Keep in mind, though, that the ODBC driver is not linked to your app.
>> It is only loaded on demand at run time, and can be replaced by any
>> other ODBC driver. So AFAIU your application is "shielded" from GPL.
>> IANAL of course.
>>
>
> Neither am I.
>
> However, the GPL FAQ has an entry specially for this case:
> <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NFUseGPLPlugins>
>
> "If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to
> each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program,
> which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the
> plug-ins. In order to use the GPL-covered plug-ins, the main program must be
> released under the GPL or a GPL-compatible free software license, and that the
> terms of the GPL must be followed when the main program is distributed for use
> with these plug-ins."
>
ODBC drivers are loaded by ODBC driver manager - which is also
dinamically linked library. Application calls functions from Driver
Manager, and then manager goes farther to the driver's level of
abstraction. Driver has no information about the parent application, and
can't call any functions from it. Driver is not a plug-in, and
application doesn't have to worry about its existance.
> The way I read this section is that linking to a GPL ODBC driver would imply
> that I have to release my program under a GPL (compatible) licence.
>
> This was one of the reasons why I added Postgres support to my program instead
> of MySQL [1]. They altered the licence for their drivers from LGPL to GPL so
> that you have to purchase a commercial licence.
>
> Rainer
>
> [1] In the meantime I am of course glad that I made this decision. I have not
> only learned a lot more about databases, but especially that Postgres is
> superior to MySQL ;-)
>
Thanks,
Andrei.
