Novell has announced that it will ship open source MySQL as its standard database with NetWare 6, and that it has purchased a commercial license for the software, allowing companies to develop applications without facing the source code disclosure requirements imposed by MySQL’s open source license.
MySQL is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which, while allowing the database to be distributed with no licensing fees, also requires disclosure of the source code of any application developed using MySQL’s source code or incorporating the product’s ODBC or JDBC drivers, or its C language library. MySQL AB, the company behind commercial distribution of the database, provides commercial licenses for developers who wish to distribute either modified MySQL source or applications using MySQL’s drivers or libraries.
According to Novell, NetWare will ship with the “Pro” version of MySQL, which includes transaction support and can range in price from $195 to $395 depending on the number of licenses purchased.
In a statement, the company underscored the popularity of MySQL and other popular open source software tools in Web development:
“MySQL for NetWare, along with Apache, PHP and Perl, create a strong set of
development tools for NetWare customers, with a huge benefit being they can
now run thousands of applications written for other platforms on NetWare 6
servers,” said Doug Knight, vice president of networking infrastructure
products for Novell.
MySQL for NetWare 6 is now available for beta testing and will be generally
available in December for no charge. As with other MySQL-supported
platforms, a GPL version will also be available for download on the MySQL
Web site at www.mysql.com. MySQL will also be included in the next
release of NetWare, scheduled for delivery in the first half of 2003. The public beta of MySQL for NetWare is available at developer.novell.com/ndk/leadedge.htm
