Re: Licensing requirements ???
This is of course my personal understanding of the licenses. If you
advise your client of things and are wrong and get sued...hey it's not
my problem. I am not giving legal advice, that's not my job.
On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 12:06, Michael D Schleif wrote:
> OK, this is my first foray into a sale-able product, based on `free'
> software.
That's fine.
> Other than Debian, the software uses Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Ok.
> My client wants to retain all rights to their software, and is not
> willing to release their software in any `free' software fashion.
Ok.
> Also, in order to manage problems and maintain SLA's, this software is
> to be sold as an integral piece of a system -- somewhat of a blackbox.
> In other words, their customers will pay one basic price, and receive an
> installed hardware server, on which Debian and software are installed
> turnkey.
Ok.
> Everything other than the proprietary software is straight DEB
> installed, so their is no issue of distributing modified `free'
> software. However, the MySQL licensing model seems to indicate that a
> licensing fee is due them; and, I wonder about others.
That's correct. You must purchase a MySQL license to use it in this
fashion. Apache, PHP, and Debian are all fine. No purchase is
required.
> What are the repercussions to my client, as a result of this model?
Buy MySQL. Make the product. Sell the product.
No problems.
Here is the deal with the licensing. There are literally hundreds of
"free" licenses available. Different products use different licenses.
MySQL is indeed free if you were to use it for internal development.
Which means your client can do all of their product development on it
without paying anything. They can test it. They can deploy it in-house
and use it.
The LGPL license which most libraries are based under allow
organizations like your client to build commercial products upon them.
They, however, will not allow your client to change the libraries (or
development platforms) without re-releasing the changes as open source.
This is to say if your client makes changes to apache or PHP they *MUST*
make those changes available at no cost to everyone.
The licenses are all available. If you have questions you should
contact a lawyer.
-Chris
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