MySQL commercial license costs

Question

We are building a commercial product that is using MySQL as the back-end. The product will not be open source (at least not initially).

We have had a very hard time getting any costing information from MySQL, they seem to want a percentage of the list price of the product, but no clarity is given on what that percentage is.

Has anyone sold a commercial product based on MySQL and successfully worked out a commercial arrangement with them? I'd be interested to hear your story and any numbers along with it.

Answer 1

Perhaps you should kick MySQL to the kerb and work with a vendor who is more open & honest about their pricing. Hiding the price always reeks of opportunism to me.

Answer 2

I just spoke with a MySQL sales rep the other day, and I agree it's hard to figure out their fee structure. The best I could understand, MySQL requires an OEM agreement in order to bundle MySQL into a commercial product. I was told that to get an OEM agreement, a company has to purchase an annual support contract from MySQL at ~$10,000/year -- there was no mention of any percentage of the list price. The Enterprise version of MySQL is $899 per server.