maria-developers team mailing list archive

[Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Sergei Golubchik <serg@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I think we're not the only GPLv2 project out there. And as unfortunate
> as it is, we cannot change it.
> Some distributions decided to maintain readline v5 package, in parallel
> to the latest readline. This seems to be the most reasonable approach -
> mysql and mariadb can use system readline, and even GPLv2 software that
> don't bundle readline can be used too.

Unrelated to MariaDB or MySQL, but as a general point: the readline v5
that is GPLv2 licensed can also be linked with software that is under
the GPLv3, if it is licensed with the "any later version" wording. (I
didn't actually confirm that it is.) Hence, a distribution like Mageia
could ship readline v5 and satisfy both GPLv2 apps and GPLv3 apps.
Otoh by shipping newer GPLv3 version of readline you leave GPLv2
projects out of luck.

(I'm pretty sure readline developers didn't quite realize what they
were doing here. Their original goal with their choice of license was
to create an advantage for GPL licensed apps, now they are doing
exactly the opposite.)

henrik






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