3.4.1 Vente de produits qui utilisent MySQL

To determine whether or not you need a MySQL license when selling your application, you should ask whether the proper functioning of your application is contingent on the use of MySQL and whether you include MySQL with your product. There are several cases to consider:

• Does your application require MySQL to function properly? If your product requires MySQL, you need a license for any machine that runs the mysqld server. For example, if you've designed your application around MySQL, then you've really made a commercial product that requires the engine, so you need a license. If your application does not require MySQL, you need not obtain a license. For example, if MySQL just added some new optional features to your product (such as adding logging to a database if MySQL is used rather than logging to a text file), it should fall within normal use, and a license would not be required. In other words, you need a license if you sell a product designed specifically for use with MySQL or that requires the MySQL server to function at all. This is true whether or not you provide MySQL for your client as part of your product distribution. It also depends on what you're doing for the client. Do you plan to provide your client with detailed instructions on installing MySQL with your software? Then your product may be contingent on the use of MySQL; if so, you need to buy a license. If you are simply tying into a database that you expect already to have been installed by the time your software is purchased, then you probably don't need a license.
• Do you include MySQL in a distribution and charge for that distribution? If you include MySQL with a distribution that you sell to customers, you will need a license for any machine that runs the mysqld server, because in this case you are selling a system that includes MySQL. This is true whether the use of MySQL with your product is required or optional.
• Do you neither require for your product nor include MySQL with it? Suppose you want to sell a product that is designed generally to use ``some database'' and that can be configured to use any of several supported alternative database systems (MySQL, PostgreSQL, or something else). That is, your product does not not require MySQL, but can support any database with a base level of functionality, and you don't rely on anything that only MySQL supports. Does one of you owe us money if your customer actually does choose to use MySQL? In this case, if you don't provide, obtain or set up MySQL for the customer should the customer decide to use it, neither of you need a license. If you do perform that service, see MySQL services.