When Sun announced it would offer certain plugins and features for enterprise customers only, and maybe even make them closed-source, the open source community was up in arms. It seems that MySQL and Sun have listened to the criticism, as these plans are now off the table. In fact, these plans did not originate within Sun in the first place.During the purchase of MySQL AB by Sun earlier this year, Sun promised not to make any changes to the structure of MySQL, but the move to possibly release some parts as closed-source seemed to contradict this. However, these plans did not originate from within Sun at all, they came from MySQL AB, from before the purchase, as a means to increase revenue. Now that MySQL is part of Sun, the move no longer makes sense. “Our initial plans were made for a company considering an IPO, but made less sense in the context of Sun, a large company with a whole family of complementary open-source software and hardware products,” said Kaj Arno, MySQL’s vice president of community relations, in a post on the MySQL website.
The statement is quite clear:
- MySQL Server is and will always remain fully functional and open source,
- so will the MySQL Connectors, and
- so will the main storage engines we ship.
In addition:
- MySQL 6.0’s pending backup functionality will be open source,
- the MyISAM driver for MySQL Backup will be open source, and
- the encryption and compression backup features will be open source.
Arno does leave the door open for any possible future proprietary plug-ins and components though, stating that MySQL remains committed to their business model, which allows for both community and commercial add-ons. “We believe the model to be useful for both those who spend money to save time, and those who spend time to save money.”
Sun already has the same model with openoffice/staroffice, why is it such a big deal so long as the core app remains open source?
From Sun’s standpoint, a user’s standpoint, a developer’s standpoint, or a cheerleader’s standpoint? It makes a difference. 😉
Edit: Darn it! I forgot to include Chicken Little’s standpoint!
Edited 2008-05-08 22:10 UTC
I think the chicken little standpoint is the same as the users standpoint.
“the sky is falling!”
and yes, I am that kind of user.
Edited 2008-05-09 04:12 UTC
I would love to see the mysql 5.x drivers be re-released under a non gpl license. Dual license with CDDL please!!
What for? From a drivers point of view I doubt that would be possible. You’d see MySQL usage sink like a rock, as they’ve played games with driver licensing before – and that was just LGPL -> GPL.
A lot of customers and ISV’s are still on 4.1 because that was when mySQL moved from LGPL drivers. Having a dual license on the drivers would allow us non-open source developers to use/redistribute mySQL 5.x drivers without buying a commercial license.
I’m not saying they should not license the driver under GPL, but dual license under GPL and (CDDL, LGPL).
It was MySQL that earlier had decided to close some parts of the source. SUN didnt want that, and tried to convince MySQL to remain open. And SUN succeeded in that. That MySQL remains open, is only because of SUN.
And regarding opening Java, SUN had to prove that SUN owned and had produced every line of code. Therefore it took so long before Java got open.
And SUN tried to ISO-certificate Java, but Microsoft hindered that. The reason Java is not ISO-certified, is because of Microsoft. Here is the link to that fact:
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/09/microsoft-conde.html