We’ve almost made it through the first day of the PHP conference in Germany. The conference is well organised and a smashing success. Thanks to everyone who has stopped by the booth and said hello!
We’ve noted some points that people are generally surprised to learn when talking to us:
- Oracle XE is free to develop on, distribute and deploy
- MySQL is not free to distribute or deploy with non-GPL software
- Oracle XE is relatively easy to install and manage
The first two points are rather important. If you build an intranet application and deploy it inside your organisation, your users can request the source code and legally you have to give it to them. It’s not likely that they will know that you’re running the GPL version of MySQL so that they have the right to request it but legally you have to provide the source code upon request. Oracle XE doesn’t have this constraint and it’s free!
The second issue is ease of use. It is true that Oracle is quite complex and if you build a serious application using it you will require the services of an Oracle DBA at some point in time. I’ve seen many MySQL installations in my time and I can confidently say that almost every one should have used the services of a MySQL DBA to tune it correctly. DBA issues aside, Oracle XE provides an easy to use, web-based GUI for performing most tasks. It’s only when you delve outside of your standard CRUD operations, like modifying the default backup strategy, that Oracle-specific knowledge comes in to play.
We hope that you’re enjoying the conference and if you haven’t stopped by and said hello yet then please do!
I believe your statement that “MySQL is not free to distribute or deploy with non-GPL software” is a bit misleading, if not incorrect. According to the MySQL Open Source License, “As long as you never distribute the MySQL Software in any way, you are free to use it for powering your application, irrespective of whether your application is under GPL license or not.”
Interesting point, Matt. Reviewing the MySQL Commercial License gives you a slightly different spin on that statement:
“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.”
It would appear that for developing an Intranet application you would be fine but if you purchase software such as vBulletin and run it on your server then you require a MySQL license. My interpretation of the spirit of the license can be summarised by “If you paid for the software then you need to pay for MySQL.”