[mythtv-users] Using Microsoft Access as a front-end to the MythTV database: HOWTO

[Dan Ritter]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2007 at 01:40:32AM +1000, David Segall wrote:
> 
> Richard Freeman wrote:
> > David Segall wrote:
> > 
> > None of this is really an issue for Myth as it uses the GPL.  I'm sure
> > that if somebody came up with something like ODBC that could be applied
> > to linux software in general (and that wasn't tied to a single language
> > like JDBC) and it became a standard then you'd see more plug-and-play DB
> > solutions for linux.  Unfortunately, right now everybody uses
> > DB-specific libraries to access their databases and nobody wants to
> > rewrite their software to support somebody's favorite RDBMS.  As a
> > result the network effect pretty-much guarantees that MySQL will be with
> > us for a long time - nobody wants to run two DBs on their server if they
> > can help it...
> I don't disagree with anything you have said but what happens in the, 
> not unlikely, event that the negotiators at Schedules Direct 
> <http://www.schedulesdirect.org/> conclude that a fifty dollar closed 
> source program is the solution to paying for the U.S. TV program guides.

Then they sell the program. The GPL doesn't restrict you from
writing a commercial program that can be invoked by a GPL program
and returns information useful to that program. You just have to
use fork-and-exec, which is, surprise, the same model that XMLTV
uses.

See
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins

-dsr-



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