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Postcard from Penguin Land, Part 2 (ZDNet)
ZDNet continues its LinuxWorld trip report. "...the only question in my mind about MySQL's future is 'who will acquire it?' My top three choices are Novell, BEA, and Sun. Novell in particular has been on the open source acquisition trail. After Ximian and SuSE, MySQL would fit into Novell's portfolio like a glove and, furthermore, would make it the only company to have two of the letters (L and M) in the LAMP stack."
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Postcard from Penguin Land, Part 2 (ZDNet) Posted Jan 28, 2004 17:00 UTC (Wed) by Spike (guest, #14160) [Link] From the MySQL web siteMySQL AB Founders The company was founded in Sweden by two Swedes and a Finn: David Axmark, Allan Larsson and Michael "Monty" Widenius who have worked together since the 80's. MySQL AB is the sole owner of the MySQL server source code, the MySQL trademark and the mysql.com domain worldwide. The company is privately held and without debt, and it is financed by venture capital since July 2001. With the growth of MySQL I don't know why this privatly held company would sell to Novell. Since it's not publicly placing value on the company would be difficult considering all it's potential. I would guess that for the near future MySQL will remain as it is.
MySQL buyer ? SCO, of course! Posted Jan 28, 2004 17:36 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] You want to ask "why the hell SCO will need MySQL for?". Litigation, what else. How, you will ask. Ok. Let's see: each and every user of recent versions of Mandrake is violating MySQL AB license. Of course some other distributions are affected as well (RedHat is unaffected), but it's only matter of time. Enough ? Why? Because they link mysql client libraries with PHP libraries. MySQL libraries used to be distributed under quite liberal license, then LGPL and now - GPL in MySQL 4.x. But PHP is distributed under PHP license! And some libraries are distributed under even more strict license! FSF say you can not link them together, PHP developers say you can not link them together, yet Mandrake does it - and consequence is that Mandrake now have no valid license to distribute MySQL at all! Sure it looks like minor problem and probably will not warrant $3 billion in damages, but... who knows ? At least here you do not need spectral analisys: you only need to read two files with licenses and you are ready to send invoices
MySQL buyer ? SCO, of course! Posted Jan 28, 2004 17:51 UTC (Wed) by jb (guest, #19013) [Link] I think you should reread MySQL license.From http://www.mysql.com/products/opensource-license.html: "Optional GPL License Exception for PHP. As a special exception, MySQL AB gives permission to distribute derivative works that are formed with GPL-licensed MySQL software and with software licensed under version 3.0 of the PHP license. You must obey the GNU General Public License in all respects for all of the code used other than code licensed under version 3.0 of the PHP license." It seems that Mandrake is allowed to link PHP with MySQL ....
MySQL buyer ? SCO, of course! Posted Jan 28, 2004 18:46 UTC (Wed) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link] Is this the way for OSS software to go ... special exceptions for certain packages. Soon we'll need something like "atp" to manage OSS license dependencies.
MySQL buyer ? SCO, of course! Posted Jan 28, 2004 21:04 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Oops. My bad. Basically I've sent the same message to MySQL AB some time ago. I've got no reply but now we have this addition. Good. Still it looks like a disaster - special exceptions for some packages is not a good way to solve a problem...
MySQL buyer ? SCO, of course! Posted Jan 29, 2004 20:12 UTC (Thu) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] A good way to solve the problem is to only use GPL-compatible licenses for your code. This includes the whole range of the GPL and LGPL, the BSD and MIT licenses, as well as the public domain. The two notable exceptions are the OpenSSL and PHP licenses. :(
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