Re: Official ODBC announcement

* Joshua D. Drake (jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com) wrote:
> The driver will be released as GPL with commercial licenses available
> from Command Prompt, Inc.

I'm a little unsure about how the GPL would play out in this regard..
For example, given that there are alternative ODBC libraries out there
it doesn't strike me that the GPL could be enforced against things
written to use ODBC which happen to end up using this GPL ODBC driver,
since the linking actually ends up happening on the user's machine.

A specific example is- would it be permissible to use Microsoft Access
with the GPL ODBC driver without a commercial license from CP? Is
Access different in some way from some home-grown application I write to
use ODBC? Or is it only if you redistribute the combination of a
closed-source application (such as Access) with the GPL ODBC driver?
Would this mean that a Debian distributor, for example, would not be
permitted to distribute this GPL ODBC driver and non-free applications
from the Debian mirrors which use ODBC, which were even written before
this driver existed?

Just trying to understand if I'll be able to use this GPL driver or not,
and what Debian will think of it (I'm a Debian Developer and certainly
have some interest in this being part of Debian, if possible). :/

Thanks,

Stephen