On 2009-06-30, Ingres Forums <info-ingres (AT) kettleriverconsulting (DOT) com> wrote:
What makes me think that is a) our legal dept. said so, and b) Ingres
Corp confirmed it. There's a reason we were offered the one-off "lite"
version.

All the drivers you name are Ingres Corp property, covered by
the GPL. Connecting using your own implementation of the wire protocol
would probably put you in the clear, but who wants to go there?

The linking issue is a grey area, the wikipedia page has some
interesting info on this (skip to the bit about "Linking and
derivative works" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License)

I have no doubt that you *can*, technically. But the ingres open
source driver for java is GPL. As the Wikipedia page says, it's a
legal grey area whether the driver manager ought to load it because
of the license conflict. I seriously doubt Ingres Corp is actually going
to smack anyone over the head with this, but I'm pretty sure that whoever
supplied your java dbms driver manager doesn't provide you with full
indemnification to cover this issue.

--
Emiliano

On 2009-06-30, Jean-Pierre Zuate, La Fage Conseil <jean-pierre.zuate (AT) lafageconseil (DOT) fr> wrote:
They're binary compatible, yes.

--
Emiliano

On Jul 2, 10:38*pm, Emiliano <em... (AT) iris-advies (DOT) nl> wrote:
IMHO, there is a difference between actually linking with or embedding
software with your product
or just "using" it (as kind of service).
If you are not comfortable with it you don't even have to deliver the
ingres open source drivers (ODBC, JDBC, etc.) with your software -
just give your customers the download link.

Even for the "gray" area of linking: Software compiled and linked on a
GPL-Linux does not require to be GPLed,
or have you heard that all the IBM and Oracle software on Linux comes
as open source?

Or the other way around: If I run GPL software on a closed source
operating system, will this operating system have to become GPL as
well?

Bodo.

On/El 03/07/09 09:47, Bodo wrote/escribió:
programs are linking using libraries which are more permissibly licensed
such as the Lesser GPL which allow for this "non-free" (as in speech)
behaviour. The moment you link with a GPL licensed library you too must
GPL your code. For example the command history recall feature in terminal
monitor we developed ourselves for Ingres 3.0 rather than use GNU readline,
a GPL library. This was before we moved to use the GPL from the CA-TOSL
(an Apache/BSD like license).

in such a way that it depended on your product to function to the degree it
made calls in to your libraries/DLLs then yes it would.

regards

grant

p.d. IANAL

--
Grant Croker - Ingres PHP and Ruby maintainer
http://blogs.planetingres.org/grant
"Life. Don't talk to me about life." (Marvin)

On Jul 3, 11:04*am, Grant Croker <grant.cro... (AT) ingres (DOT) com> wrote:
The ODBC/JDBC driver managers are developed in a way that is
independent from any specific DBMS to function.
Therefore I do not see any reason why a program that uses an Ingres
driver via such a driver manager has to become GPL.

Bodo.

On/El 03/07/09 12:39, Bodo wrote/escribió:
application and us, such as JNDI or an ODBC driver manager which is not
GPL encumbered.

g

--
Grant Croker - Ingres PHP and Ruby maintainer
http://blogs.planetingres.org/grant
I wrote an ad for Apple Computer: 'Macintosh - We might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end.'

On Jul 3, 2009, at 6:29 AM, Grant Croker wrote:

Not to complicate things, but the driver managers are usually
also developed under some sort of license. Honestly, I've never
looked at the Sun Java license (even thought I've used Java since
before it was called that).

JNDI classes are part of Sun's J2EE, but are often re-implemented
from scratch by the container. Those containers are often, but not
always, open source with their own licenses.

What a tangled web we weave.

I personally hate all this. I worry about it every time I need
to solve a customer's problems. I really wish I could instead take
my "toolset" and apply it in the best way possible to ensure a good
and lasting solution. Just doing that is hard enough. Adding the
legal issues in makes it almost feel like work!

I want to enjoy building solutions again. Let's shoot the lawyers!

;-)

Michael Leo
Director of Managed Services
Kettle River Consulting

MLeo (AT) KettleRiverConsulting (DOT) com
+1 612-859-2108 (cell)
+1 612-605-1978 (fax)

On 2009-07-03, Bodo <Bodo.Bergmann (AT) ingres (DOT) com> wrote:
I agree that this is your opinion. I suspect you are not an IP lawyer.
The legal dept at our firm had people specialized in these matters.

That only shifts the issue to your customers. I'm sure they'll
appreciate that.

That is *entirely* different. You're not linking against the kernel
directly. Look up the license of the libs you're actually linking
against, for example glibc: LGPL, not GPL. The LGPL library acts as a
legal separation between the GPL parts of your software and your
parts. It is the entire reason the LGPL exists at all. Furthermore,
so-called system libraries get a special status under the GPL, see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq....compatibleLibs.

I have asked Ingres at the time whether the choice to make the connection
libs GPL instead of LGPL, and they said it was.

No, and they don't have to. IBM and Oracle too have people in their
legal dept that know about licensing issues.

Again, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq....compatibleLibs on
that matter.

You seem to assume that I'm an anti-open-source zealot who posits
inflammatory material based on gut-reactions to the words open source.
I assure you this is not the case. If you were to ask me my position
on open source I would say that I'm for it in general. And in the
particular case that triggered my input to this thread, my gut
reaction was "we'll be OK", and our legal dept *and* Ingres said "you
won't". So instead of posting gut-feel, anecdotal rebuttals, try
finding a little background for your claims. In this particular case I
would very much *love* to be *proven* wrong, because I'll gladly take
that proof and smack an now ex-Ingres manager about the head with it.
Not to mention the person in legal who fucked up. The above arguments
don't constitute proof in this regard.

--
Emiliano

On 2009-07-03, Mike Leo <mleo (AT) kettleriverconsulting (DOT) com> wrote:
I'm with you on that.

Unfortunately, many choose the road of "let's ignore that until it
bites us", thereby perpetuating the sordid mess.

In the case with Ingres, I have chosen to address it. Since I couldn't
come to a workable solution, we chose to abandon Ingres, mere weeks
before we were supposed to launch our software, delaying a much-needed
product so we could rewrite it to support another database that wouldn't
get us in licensing hot-water. This was not an easy decision to make.

*And* the managers that hired them. Really, I insist.

--
Emiliano

Grant Croker wrote:
Well, that's a slight exaggeration. Not when you *link*. When you
provide the binary to to someone else, you're obliged by the GPL to
provide your source code, too, under the same terms.

I understand that Ingres Corp. doesn't provide support for self-built
binaries, that supported binaries are distributed without source code.

However, does anything legal or technical prevent the use of a supported
client library (say, Open API) from connecting to a community edition
server? Certainly the GPL wouldn't have a problem with that.

--jkl