Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle [LWN.net]

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 10:42 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
In reply to: Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle by hingo
Parent article: Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

"It is absolutely right that MySQL business model was designed the way it was
on purpose, deliberately, even to make money. And such a business can be sold
to another business, etc... And from an open source point of view you might
think this was a bad model and the reason we are now in this mess (debatable,
but valid point)"

I don't think there is much room for debate on that. Monty in his discourses
isn't even pointing to this fact which is one of the reasons for me to
believe that this is a self serving position. If I create a mess and wanted
someone else to clean it up, the least I should be doing is to acknowledge if
not apologize for the fact that I created the mess in the first place.

to post comments

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 12:19 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (6 responses)

Perhaps so :-)

Since personally I'm not the one who invented dual licensing, so have nothing to take credit nor apologize for, I can say that my personal opinion is that it remains to be seen if it is a sustainable model or not. It is a good way to produce great software which is GPL licensed. In some cases it may even turn out to have a happy ending, like is the case with Qt now. On the other hand, this risk was always there.

Due to MySQL's and the model's financial success, it is becoming an increasingly popular model and more software is being created under a similar setting. It may be good for us to also be aware of potential pitfalls.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 13:09 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (5 responses)

"It is a good way to produce great software which is GPL licensed. In some
cases it may even turn out to have a happy ending, like is the case with
Qt now. On the other hand, this risk was always there."

Heh. Qt's happy ending turned out to be leaving behind dual licensing by
releasing it under LGPL and striving to become a real community project
instead of centralized ownership. That's because Nokia realized it made
better business sense to strive for ubiquity. I agree, that is the way to
go forward and Oracle might still do that since they don't need rely on
dual licensing. MySQL's business according to then CEO was increasingly
moving towards support and services as well. Anyway, you wanted to know why
I consider it self serving and I hope I have explained that clearly to you.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 13:18 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (4 responses)

Yes, thank you.

And: My point exactly with Qt, less optimistic with Oracle but time will tell. If they wanted to LGPL MySQL, they should have saved us these months of agony and done it long ago...

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 14:47 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

Sun is too busy keeping its head out of the water to think about such
matters. Oracle cannot do it before acquiring them. I won't even say that
it is likely but it does make sense for Oracle to consider it at some
point after the acquisition.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 21, 2009 8:17 UTC (Mon) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (2 responses)

Actually, AFAIK, Sun has discussed it with Oracle and Oracle has rejected it.

On the other hand, we shouldn't read too much into it. Majority of Oracle people haven't yet understood what significance it would have anyway (for instance, in conversations they would confuse MySQL commercial licensing (non-GPL) and subscriptions (GPL) and just in general when you can use the GPL version and when not). So if they one day turn around and do LGPL anyway, it can be explained with pure cluelessness.

That, and having seen how Oracle plays this game, they could just out of principle refuse to do any compromises with the EU, then do the same thing anyway later. Just to make it clear they don't negotiate with anyone about these things.

But as I said, assuming rational and informed behavior from Oracle, it would seem they are against LGPL.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 21, 2009 12:06 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

"Actually, AFAIK, Sun has discussed it with Oracle and Oracle has rejected it."

Reference?

"Majority of Oracle people haven't yet understood what significance it would have anyway (for instance, in conversations they would confuse MySQL commercial licensing (non-GPL) and subscriptions (GPL) and just in general when you can use the GPL version and when not)"

This was a common accusation against MySQL Ab and then later Sun as well. So not specific to Oracle at all.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 21, 2009 13:00 UTC (Mon) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

Reference?

Those discussions did of course not happen in public. (And no, I don't have first hand information, I could be misled myself.)

This was a common accusation against MySQL Ab and then later Sun as well. So not specific to Oracle at all.

I give you the Sun part, it was a big company and certainly most Sun employees had no clue about MySQL's business model either. But my point was exactly that it may be premature for me to say anything about Oracle's plans with MySQL licensing based on their current actions, since currently they don't even understand the basics of what the current situation is. So I tried to say that from all I can see I don't expect them to go LGPL, but if it happens, then this could explain why they didn't do it much earlier.