Hm.

Posted Aug 13, 2010 21:38 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Hm. by vblum
Parent article: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica)

Actually, PJ and Florian are NOT on the same side. "The enemy of my enemy is not my friend".

PJ and Florian are both anti-software-patent. That's where the similarity ends. Florian is widely viewed on Groklaw as being anti-software-freedom. The argument (admittedly Monty's argument, but promoted by Florian) that MySQL should be forcibly relicenced to a developer-friendly licence like BSD has pretty much burnt his boats in that arena.

Cheers,
Wol

Hm.

Posted Aug 13, 2010 21:40 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

We never made such an argument. See my longer post in this same thread.

Hm.

Posted Aug 13, 2010 23:10 UTC (Fri) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses)

I do not wish to fan the flames, and I thought the present thread was finished, and civil. The "enemy" language concerns me. As much as people may have strong feelings, this is not a war.

In this very thread, Florian stated publicly that it is not his belief that MySQL "should" be relicensed. He called it a "very suboptimal" choice.

Whatever the history, he wrote this quite clearly, here and today. This is something different than you quote. I think it would help greatly if that were acknowledged, too.

Hm.

Posted Aug 14, 2010 4:49 UTC (Sat) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link]

In this very thread, Florian stated publicly that it is not his belief that MySQL "should" be relicensed. He called it a "very suboptimal" choice. Whatever the history, he wrote this quite clearly, here and today.

I point out that there is no history where I would have been any more favorable on a license change.

In particular, I want to point out that I organized two public events during the merger control process: a press conference at The Westin San Francisco Airport on 26 October 2009 (attended by, among others, eWeek's Chris Preimesberger and TheRegister's Gavin Clarke) and an analyst briefing at The Westin New York at Times Square on 27 October 2009 with 120 or more attendees.

At those events, various participants asked me about how I would view a license change as a possible basis on which the EU might be satisfied (note that Oracle always had the option to walk out on the Sun deal as a whole if the EU had blocked it; and that the EU could not have imposed anything, it could only have accepted an offer made by Oracle, which Oracle never made though).

So there were plenty of witnesses there at those events and I can say definitively that I fought very hard against all of the claims that a license change could solve the problem. I had to fight so hard because at both events (even at the press conference) there were hedge fund managers and risk arbitrageurs who owned Sun stock and wanted the deal to go through, so they were arguing aggressively for whatever might be a "solution". And I stood firm. On those occasions and throughout the process, from the beginning until the end.

I never ever said MySQL's license should be "forcibly" changed

Posted Aug 14, 2010 4:39 UTC (Sat) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, PJ and Florian are NOT on the same side.

That's about the only thing we can agree on. PJ has a simple principle: IBM and its strategic allies are always the good guys. Maybe because of this story about Groklaw allegedly having received funding from the OSDL? Anyway, whatever is bad must always be linked to Microsoft, no matter how absurd those theories are. By contrast, I focus on the issues no matter where they are coming from. I take differentiated perspectives on matters. If you read my comments on Oracle vs. Google, you can see that I don't support Google on everything, but against Oracle's patent aggression they should be supported.

The argument (admittedly Monty's argument, but promoted by Florian) that MySQL should be forcibly relicenced to a developer-friendly licence like BSD has pretty much burnt his boats in that arena.

I prefer not to use such strong words, but in this case I have to: that is just a lie. Nothing else but a lie.

You can read right here in this LWN discussion both the explanation provided by Monty Program's former CEO and I also ask you read my own clarification here on LWN that a license change could not have been foisted upon Oracle against their will and was not proposed; instead, I always made it clear how very suboptimal it would have been.

Apart from being a lie, I also think it's unreasonable to even attach so much importance to that. Does PJ advocate software freedom by saying IBM is free to sue the pants off TurboHercules? Did PJ ever comment on IBM's mockery of software freedom in its Bilski brief, in which IBM claimed that software patents liberated programmers and made free and open source software so very popular in order to convince the judges that software patents are a good thing for free software?

I never ever said MySQL's license should be "forcibly" changed

Posted Aug 15, 2010 22:33 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Apart from being a lie, I also think it's unreasonable to even attach so much importance to that. Does PJ advocate software freedom by saying IBM is free to sue the pants off TurboHercules? Did PJ ever comment on IBM's mockery of software freedom in its Bilski brief, in which IBM claimed that software patents liberated programmers and made free and open source software so very popular in order to convince the judges that software patents are a good thing for free software?

You'll need to search for it, but yes I DO remember PJ commenting on IBM's Bilski brief. And I DO remember her HORROR at how it misrepresents things. It's all very well you saying PJ is an IBM sock-puppet but anybody who actually *follows* Groklaw will know that "we're on IBM's side IF IBM is on ours". And this was a pretty blatant case where GL and IBM were NOT on the same side.

Cheers,
Wol

I never advocated a MySQL license change, especially not a forcible one

Posted Aug 16, 2010 8:02 UTC (Mon) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link]

I had previously replied, but here's a link for those who want to see all the detail plus links to several documents, serving as conclusive evidence that I consistently argued AGAINST -- NOT FOR -- a MySQL license change. PJ accused me of the opposite of what I did.

The link leads to a part of a posting that addresses Oracle/Google licensing issues, which should be the primary topic of this discussion here anyway ;-)