To determine whether or not you need a MySQL license when selling
your application, you should ask whether the proper functioning of your
application is contingent on the use of MySQL and whether you
include MySQL with your product. There are several cases to
consider:
-
Does your application require MySQL to function properly?
If your product requires MySQL, you need a license for any machine
that runs the
mysqld server. For example, if you've designed your
application around MySQL, then you've really made a commercial
product that requires the engine, so you need a license.
If your application does not require MySQL, you need not obtain a
license. For example, if MySQL just added some new optional
features to your product (such as adding logging to a database if
MySQL is used rather than logging to a text file), it should fall
within normal use, and a license would not be required.
In other words, you need a license if you sell a product designed
specifically for use with MySQL or that requires the MySQL
server to function at all. This is true whether or not you provide
MySQL for your client as part of your product distribution.
It also depends on what you're doing for the client. Do you plan to provide
your client with detailed instructions on installing MySQL with your
software? Then your product may be contingent on the use of MySQL;
if so, you need to buy a license. If you are simply tying into a database
that you expect already to have been installed by the time your software is
purchased, then you probably don't need a license.
-
Do you include MySQL in a distribution and charge for that
distribution?
If you include MySQL with a distribution that you sell to customers,
you will need a license for any machine that runs the
mysqld server,
because in this case you are selling a system that includes MySQL.
This is true whether the use of MySQL with your product
is required or optional.
-
Do you neither require for your product nor include MySQL with it?
Suppose you want to sell a product that is designed generally to use ``some
database'' and that can be configured to use any of several supported
alternative database systems (MySQL, PostgreSQL, or something
else). That is, your product does not not require MySQL, but can
support any database with a base level of functionality, and you don't rely
on anything that only MySQL supports. Does one of you owe us money
if your customer actually does choose to use MySQL?
In this case, if you don't provide, obtain or set up MySQL for the
customer should the customer decide to use it, neither of you need a
license. If you do perform that service, see section 3.4.2 Vente de services MySQL.
