Re: Official ODBC announcement

* Joshua D. Drake (jd@commandprompt.com) wrote:
> >A specific example is- would it be permissible to use Microsoft Access
> >with the GPL ODBC driver without a commercial license from CP?
>
> Yes.

That's good- and covers most of my use cases.

> > Is
> >Access different in some way from some home-grown application I write to
> >use ODBC?
>
> Nope.

Ok..  I guess I was meaning to say with that question was that the
'home-grown' application was closed source, perhaps that misunderstood,
which followed to the next question where that home-grown application
would then be distributed...

> > Or is it only if you redistribute the combination of a
> >closed-source application (such as Access) with the GPL ODBC driver?
>
> Nope.

Ok...

> Where you (or your customer) would have to give dollars would be if you
> were using Access as the platform for your application and that
> application was closed source.
>
> More specifically if that application was closed source and your
> distributed it that way.

Now I'm confused and worried.  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but the
situation you describe sounds like:

MyApp -> Access -> ODBC -> GPL ODBC driver

Where I'm guessing 'MyApp' is, perhaps, something in Visual Basic
Access?  Yet an application which looked like:

MyApp -> ODBC -> GPL ODBC driver

would be ok (following from the question above about home-grown apps
being different from Access) even if that application was closed source
and distributed (from question 3 above..)?

I'm still curious about how this may play out in Debian, I'm asking some
folks about it.  My expectation is that they're going to feel that as
long as an application is written against ODBC that it doesn't directly
depend and isn't a derived work of the GPL ODBC driver, though that
doesn't sound like your intent here (which may concern various folks
enough to not be willing to include it in Debian)...

I guess you might be able to show that a given closed-source
application depends on the GPL ODBC driver if it uses
PostgreSQL-specific SQL/features and doesn't work for some reason with
the current LGPL ODBC driver.  Still seems like a bit of a stretch.

    Thanks,

        Stephen