License Improvements

Posted Dec 14, 2009 18:18 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312)
In reply to: License Improvements by kripkenstein
Parent article: Oracle's commitments for MySQL

The statement you quote appears to apply to developers of storage engines
like InnoDB, as opposed to developers of software that accesses the MySQL
server as a client. No doubt the latter is the primary source of revenue for
the product.

License Improvements

Posted Dec 14, 2009 18:29 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]

It is entirely possible that what you say is the case.

But what I see as the main issue here is that Oracle is basically addressing all the complaints about destroying the licensing model around MySQL with respect to 3rd party storage solutions. Oracle is saying, forget about all that revenue, let's get this deal passed.

License Improvements

Posted Dec 15, 2009 7:20 UTC (Tue) by TRS-80 (guest, #1804) [Link] (1 responses)

Monty is concerned about them too:

If Oracle would accept third party GPL contributions to MySQL, this would mean that MySQL would have the same problems as a GPL library has: - MySQL can only be used together with GPL licensed code and licenses that are compatible with GPL; Unfortunately a lot of Open Source licenses is not compatible with GPL. MySQL can only be embedded in GPL programs - The FOSS exception, that ensures that Perl, PHP, Python programs are not affected by the GPL would not apply anymore - MySQL can't be used by any distributed closed source application - All commercial storage engine vendors (who have put 30-100 million USD into the MySQL ecosystem) will probably go out of business. It was because of the above problems that GPL is not a good license for a widely used library and why FSF invented LGPL. MySQL is a bit more complex than a normal GPL library, as one can build upon or inside MySQL, but it has essentially the same problems.

Never mind that MySQL AB changed the license on the client libraries from LGPL to GPL back in 2004! He's just a little bit disingenuous IMHO.

License Improvements

Posted Dec 15, 2009 7:46 UTC (Tue) by TRS-80 (guest, #1804) [Link]

Sorry, the license change was done at the release of MySQL 4 2003, it was 2004 that PHP kicked up a fuss and stopped shipping the MySQL connector by default in favor of SQLite which caused the FOSS exception was added.