GPLv2 Libraries — Is There a Point?

PiSkyHi writes "I understand that if I build an application that links with a library that is licensed under GPLv2, I must also make my application GPL2. I can see that value in this for an application. But for a library, what's to stop me separating my program into a GPLv2-compliant client app that talks to the rest of my (choose my own license) application?"

Comments

Mysql, anyone?

[sanermind]

This reminds me of our experience with mysql.. they changed the license of their drivers (the jdbc driver, in this instance) to GPL from LGPL a while ago, and also affirmed a legal position (at least in their marketing materials) that using the now GPL library would require any application dynamically linking/loading it to also be GPL, with the exception of being able to buy licenses to a separate non-GPL'd commercial instantiation of the library. (They also conveniently hired the guy who had been maintaining the previously freely useable LGPL version).

In theory, of course, someone else could re-invent the wheel and create another fully LGPL JDBC driver for mysql.. (I was ever-so-mildly tempted to do start work on that myself, out of spite and irritation, but didn't have the time).

Needless to say, after talking to the lawyer we had to switch our entire infrastructure over to postgresql. On the bright side, I found that I rather preferred postgres as a more comprehensive and functional sql anyway. (No more having to do manual tricks for multi-merges, etc). Still, it seemed like very bad faith to switch the license like that right out from under people who had already been using it, all in the hopes of further monetizing mysql. (Yes, the earlier license applied to the old versions of the driver... which happened not to work properly with newer versions of mysql).

I once talked to someone else else who makes a a bit of money on the side selling some piece of booking software. Unfortunately for him, almost half his clients were deploying his software in mysql shops. His software was a drop-in .war archive that was trivial to install (just copy it into tomcat/webapps or whatever (well, and run the database creation script to set up the tables for it) and it was good to go. After the license change he was unable to distribute a fully packaged pre-working .war file with the necessary drivers for client databases. (Oracle was propriatary, but free to distribute).. he had to write a specialized install script that the customer could use to unpack the .war, install the mysql jdbc driver, and repackage it, where the script required the client to affirm that they were using a legally licensed non-GPL version of the jdbc driver from mysql to be able to install/link it. This took the liability off of him ...The liability for having the temerity to want to talk with a basic software infrastructure service (such as a sql server), without GPL'ing his little niche app.

I'm all for the GPL. I love it! I've used it myself in a few things I've developed. I love all the good it's brought, etc, the idea of openness, a publishing and peer-reviewed manner of developing code, all that.

But I still find it very obnoxious to make a piece of library glue GPL. That's exactly what the LGPL is there for. Logically, it's not a derivative work of mysql if you use it for processing sql transactions (making no modifications or redistributions of it of any kind) any more than a file you create in the gimp is a derivative work of the gimp.