Open Stack

On Thu Jun 12 14:13:05 2014, Chris Friesen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for the community viewpoint on whether there is any chance
> of license contamination between mysql and nova.  I realize that
> lawyers would need to be involved for a proper ruling, but I'm curious
> about the view of the developers on the list.
>
> Suppose someone creates a modified openstack and wishes to sell it to
> others.  They want to keep their changes private.  They also want to
> use the mysql database.
>
> The concern is this:
>
> nova is apache licensed
> sqlalchemy is MIT licensed
> mysql-python (aka mysqldb1) is GPLv2 licensed
> mysql is GPLv2 licensed
>
>
>
> The concern is that since nova/sqlalchemy/mysql-python are all
> essentially linked together, an argument could be made that the work
> as a whole is a derivative work of mysql-python, and thus all the
> source code must be made available to anyone using the binary.
>
> Does this argument have any merit?

the GPL is excepted in the case of MySQL and other MySQL products 
released by Oracle (can you imagine such a sentence being 
written.....), see 
http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/foss-exception/.   If 
MySQL-Python itself were an issue, OpenStack could switch to another 
MySQL library, such as MySQL Connector/Python which is now MySQL's 
official Python driver: 
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/connector-python/en/index.html

> Has anyone tested any of the mysql DBAPIs with more permissive licenses?

I just mentioned other MySQL drivers the other day; MySQL 
Connector/Python, OurSQL and pymysql are well tested within SQLAlchemy 
and these drivers generally pass all tests.   There's some concern over 
compatibility with eventlet, however, I can't speak to that just yet.

>
> Chris
>
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