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Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net)Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net)Posted Feb 19, 2006 1:47 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net) by larryr Parent article: Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net)
My opinion is that what MySQL and Sleepycat (and Trolltech) have been doing is trying to leverage the GPL as a way to appear to be somehow working in the spirit of Free Software when what they are doing is antipodal to that spirit, and Oracle is hopefully taking advantage of that chicanery.This horse has already been beaten to death, but why do you think that? I think that what they are doing is very much in the line of free software; dual (GPL / proprietary) licensing is even accepted by Stallman IIRC. We (as in "you and me and everyone else") get libre code licensed under the GPL. The publisher also chooses to provide the software under a different proprietary license, if you are willing to pay for it. But if you want to build free software then you just have to publish under the GPL. Why is it antipodal to the spirit of free software? It is precisely what that spirit is about!
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Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net) Posted Feb 19, 2006 3:52 UTC (Sun) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link] My opinion is that the spirit of Free Software is about believing the software should be free, not simply using the GPL as a flavor of "free for non-commerical use" license to fuel the creation of demand for the non-free version of the software. Larry
Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net) Posted Feb 19, 2006 5:33 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] > the software should be free The software is free if it's licensed under the GPL. Whether or not it's also available under a different licence doesn't change the fact that it is free. > the GPL as a flavor of "free for non-commerical use" license GPLed software is free for commercial use, as long as that commercial use doesn't involve redistributing it under a more restrictive licence.
Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net) Posted Feb 19, 2006 19:50 UTC (Sun) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link] Most of the above is irrelevant to Sleepycat and Berkeley DB, since it's not released under the GPL in the first place.
The license seems to be GPL-compatible, in that the union of Berkeley DB's license and the GPL does not impose additional restrictions that you wouldn't also have with plain GPL. The GPL does not give you the additional privilege of paying license fees in lieu of distributing source code, which is permitted by the Berkeley DB license. Merging Berkeley DB with other dual-licensed code might be a problem.
IANAL, TINLA.
The one nice thing about dual GPL (or GPL-oid) and proprietary licenses is that there will still be GPL code left over when the proprietor implodes. Only one vendor gets the special privilege of selling escapes from GPL license obligations--everyone else gets the code and the GPL, and is forbidden from doing the same as the first vendor. IMHO that's a lot better than many of the alternatives.
Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net) Posted Feb 20, 2006 8:46 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] Dare I suggest you go to the Free Software Foundation's website and read up on that stuff - especially about the Four Software Freedoms?
I've been involved on the LSB with licencing issues, and it is *very* *easy* for dual-licenced software to be Free. Simply put, "if you can get it under the GPL, it's Free Software".
Indeed, RMS is, I believe, on record as saying he *prefers* software which is dual proprietary/GPL licenced above software that is LGPL - or put differently, he believes Qt is free-er than GTK ...
Cheers,
Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying? (Technocrat.net) Posted Feb 20, 2006 18:54 UTC (Mon) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link] Indeed, RMS is, I believe, on record as saying he *prefers* software which is dual proprietary/GPL licenced above software that is LGPL I think actions speak louder than words, so I prefer in the case of RMS to look at the ratio of GNU software which is LGPL to GNU software which is dual proprietary/GPL licensed. or put differently, he believes Qt is free-er than GTK ... Software which is GPL is by definition "more Free" than if it was LGPL, and by that definition the versions of Qt which have been released using the GPL are more free than GTK. That says nothing about non-free versions of Qt or the good faith of its proprietor. Larry
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