MySQL Commercial License

The Commercial License is an agreement with MySQL AB for organizations that do not want to release their application source code. Commercially licensed customers get a commercially supported product with assurances from MySQL. Commercially licensed users are also free from the requirement of making their own application open source.

When your application is not licensed under either the GPL-compatible Free Software License as defined by the Free Software Foundation or approved by OSI, and you intend to or you may distribute MySQL software, you must first obtain a commercial license to the MySQL product.

Typical examples of MySQL distribution include:

• Selling software that includes MySQL to customers who install the software on their own machines.

• Selling software that requires customers to install MySQL themselves on their own machines.

• Building a hardware system that includes MySQL and selling that hardware system to customers for installation at their own locations.

Specifically:

• If you include the MySQL server with an application that is not licensed under the GPL or GPL-compatible license, you need a commercial license for the MySQL server.

• If you develop and distribute a commercial application and as part of utilizing your application, the end-user must download a copy of MySQL; for each derivative work, you (or, in some cases, your end-user) need a commercial license for the MySQL server and/or MySQL client libraries.

• If you include one or more of the MySQL drivers in your non-GPL application (so that your application can run with MySQL), you need a commercial license for the driver(s) in question. The MySQL drivers currently include an ODBC driver, a JDBC driver and the C language library.

• GPL users have no direct legal relationship with MySQL AB. The commercial license, on the other hand, is MySQL AB's private license, and provides a direct legal relationship with MySQL AB.

With a commercial non-GPL MySQL server license, one license is required per database server (single installed MySQL binary). There are no restrictions on the number of connections, number of CPUs, memory or disks to that one MySQL database server. The MaxDB server is licensed per CPU or named user.

Non-Profits, Academic Institutions, and Private Individuals

If you represent a non-profit organization or an academic institution, we recommend you publish your application as an open source / free software project using the GPL license. In this manner, you are free to use MySQL software free of charge under the GPL license. We believe that if you have strong reasons to not publish your application in accordance with the GPL, you should purchase commercial licenses. Note that non-profits may apply to MySQL for free commercial licenses and such applications will be carefully considered.

If you are a private individual you are free to use MySQL software for your personal applications as long as you do not distribute them. If you distribute them, you must make a decision between the Commercial License and the GPL.

Please note that even if you ship a free demo version of your own application, the above rules apply.

Recommendations

Please note that MySQL AB can only give advice on which license is right for you. The final judgment, of course can be made only by a court of law. With that said, we recommend the commercial license to all commercial and government organizations. This frees you from the broad and strict requirements of the GPL license.

To all free software enthusiasts we recommend our products under the GPL license. We believe that MySQL AB is one of the world's largest companies that offers all its software under the GPL license.

To anyone in doubt, we recommend the commercial license. It is never wrong. Thanks to our cost-effective way of producing software, we are able to sell our commercial licenses at prices well under the industry average.

FOSS Exception

We have created a license exception which enables Free and Open Source software ("FOSS") to be able to include the GPL-licensed MySQL client libraries despite the fact that not all open source licenses are compatible with the GPL.Read more about the exception.

Older Versions

Note that some older versions of the MySQL database server (prior to 3.23.19) are using the Version 4, March 5, 1995, license. See the documentation for the specific version for more information.

When in Doubt

If you have any questions about Licensing, please contact the MySQL Sales Team to explore the options available for your specific scenario. http://www.mysql.com/buy-mysql

OSI = Open Source Initiative, www.opensource.org/licenses
GPL = GNU General Public License, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Version 4.1, 12 March 2004

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