Yes, and you you absolutely have to ship proprietary software that connects to MySQL you can use libdrizzle[0] which is a BSD licensed cleanroom implementation of the client library. Alternately you can go dig up the old original public domain version of the client library that existed before Monty got the clever idea of using fear of the GPL to sell more MySQL client licenses.

The license issue is FUD.

[0]: https://launchpad.net/libdrizzle