[Koha] Proposal To Switch Koha's License to GPLv3 and AGPLv3 or AGPLv3

[Joe Atzberger]

> A.2.  Aaron did not agree with my presumption that Koha is currently in
> part a derived work of MySQL.  He used arguments about separate processes
> of Koha and MySQL.  He was somewhat dismissive of MySQL specific calls in
> Koha which do not incorporate MySQL source code or change the
> functionality of MySQL at a low level in C or C++.
>
> I thought that some of Aaron's suggested analysis of distinguishing Koha
> as a separate work from MySQL with no derivative work relationship was
> mistaken.  Whether a separate process is spawned was unconvincing as an
> argument and did not account for programs which are accepted as a single
> program and spawn multiple processes.  Express dependency on MySQL seemed
> sufficient to me to establish a derivative work relationship.
>
> Even if my presumption might be correct, Aaron seemed fairly confident
> that there would never be a problem from Oracle over Koha using GPL 3 or
> AGPL 3 as a license violation of GPL 2.  Perhaps more importantly, he
> considered the possibility that some other party might make a similar
> claim against Koha as fanciful.


Thomas, I have to agree with Aaron here.  You are confusing Koha's use
of mysql-specific *query language* with the customization of the mysql
server/client source code.  This would be akin to thinking that
including browser-specific javascript produces a derivative work of
that browser.

The OSS Exception you linked relates to client driver libraries.  In
our case, something like DBD::mysql may be a driver library.  Koha as
a whole is not.

We don't distribute mysql source code and we do not build a custom
mysql client.  I see absolutely zero legitimate basis for considering
Koha a derivative work of msyql, just the same as it is not a
derivative work of Apache.  Our application is *dependent* on those
projects, but not derivative of them.  I don't think we need to be
concerned about whether mysql is licensed GPL 2 or GPL>=2 (or BSD or
whatever).  All we need to care about is that their licensing remains
"open enough" for us to continue including a dependency on their
software.

Lars is correct that we only need to worry about the source that is in
Koha when making a license decision.

--Joe Atzberger