This problem scuppered me for a while as well. None of the answers so far addressed the original problem but I believe mine does so I'll post it in case it helps anyone else.

I have MySQL (from mysql.com) Community Edition 5.7.10 installed on OS X 10.10.3

In the end I created a /etc/mysql/my.cnf with the following contents:-

[mysqld]

sql_mode=NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION

After restarting the server a SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'sql_mode'; gave me:-

+---------------+------------------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +---------------+------------------------+ | sql_mode | NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION | +---------------+------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Finally, no strict mode!