Open Stack

On Thu, 2014-06-12 at 12:13 -0600, 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?
> 
> Has anyone tested any of the mysql DBAPIs with more permissive licenses?

Thanks for bringing this up. I've forwarded the question to the
legal-discuss mailing list:

http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/legal-discuss/2014-June/000291.html

The general question of using GPL libraries is covered by:

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/LegalIssuesFAQ#Licensing_of_library_dependencies

But I'm not sure whether the specific question of mysql-python's license
has come up before.

Mark.