[CLUE-Admin] PHP and MySQL Licensing Question

[Jed S. Baer]

Lynn mentioned this, so I figured I'd check it out.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-general&m=105699415814630&w=2

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From:     Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus () lerdorf ! com>

There will always be MySQL support in PHP of one kind or another.  The
only change in PHP5 is that we are no longer bundling the client library
itself.  Some reasons in no particular order:

  1. Most systems these days already have the client library installed.
  2. Given 1, having multiple versions of the library can get messy.
     For example, if you link mod_auth_mysql against 1 version and PHP
     against another and then enable both in Apache, you get a nice fat
     crash.  Also, the bundled library didn't always play well with the
     installed server version the most obvious symptom of this being
     disagreement over where to find the mysql.socket unix domain socket
     file.
  3. Maintenance was somewhat lax and it was falling further and further
     behind the released version.
  4. Future versions of the library are under the GPL and thus we don't
     have an upgrade path since we cannot bundle a GPL'ed library in a
     BSD/Apache-style licensed project.  A clean break in PHP5 seemed like
     the best option.

This won't actually affect that many people.  UNIX users, at least the
ones who know what they are doing, tend to always build PHP against their
system's libmyqlclient library simply by doing --with-mysql=/usr when
building PHP.

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So, for the CLUE server, it look like we would just need to build from
source for future use, if we use MySQL.

BTW, that package Zonker mentioned for building debs and RPMs is
CheckInstall

 + http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=8472/ur0307f/ (Review)
 + http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/index.php

Later,
jed
-- 
... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier