Re: Re: MySQL & ActiveRecord Licenses

Chris Mear
2011-03-21T20:50:28Z

On 21 Mar 2011, at 20:33, Bryan Crossland wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Paul E. G. Lynch
<plynchnlm-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>wrote:
>
>> GPL requires that if you link with the library, you have to have a GPL-
>> compatible license so that the result is available under GPL.  See:
>> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
>>
>> So, if ActiveRecord is linking with the MySQL libraries, then my
>> understanding is that it should be GPL (or something compatible).
>> Just to clarify, I do not wish ActiveRecord to be GPL, and I do not
>> even like GPL.  I am just trying to understand how they have avoided
>> that license issue, because it has implications for the Ruby on Rails
>> web application I am working on (for which we are working on a
>> license).
>>
>>   --Paul
>>
>>
> According to the MIT License it is compatible with GPL (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License). There is more links in there to
> how the compatiblity works. To my knowledge no one has had a legal issue
yet
> with connecting their Rails app through ActiveRecord to MySQL.  I hope that
> helps.

License compatibility isn''t bi-directional.

"MIT is compatible with GPL" means that you can link to or include an
MIT-licensed library in your project, and then license your project (the
combination of your work and the MIT-licensed library) under the GPL.

However, because of the viral nature of the GPL, you cannot link to
GPL''d code in your project and then license your project under the MIT
license. This is only possible if the copyright holder of the GPL''d
code grants you an additional license (which is the case with the MySQL client
library).

Chris