Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 22nd Oct 2009 21:38 UTC, submitted by google_ninja
"Digital civil liberties organization Open Rights Group, Knowledge Ecology International and software developer Richard Stallman tell the EC in a letter that they are concerned about Oracle's possible squashing of competition in the database market by abandoning MySQL."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-06-21
And one more thing: Oracle did this before. They bought InnoDB and BerkeleyDB and they didn't bury them, they kept developing them.
Plus, I don't see where anybody would get the idea that MySQL and Oracle are competitors. These two sit at completely oposite ends of the market. MySQL is (at the core and in its most widely used form) a non-ACID RDBMS engine built for speed and simplicity rather than reliability and complexity. Does that sound anything like the Oracle database? In case MySQL dissapeared, would projects like WordPress or cheap hosting services migrate to Oracle? No, they'd move to Postgres, which is also free. There'd be no business gained for Oracle.
Member since:2009-07-24
What is Stallman's problem exactly? In either case, MySQL is GPL.
GPL2 *only*.
He's worried about the future of MySQL if its new copyright owner choses to never move it to GPL3, while the rest of the FOSS community (at least the part thats using the GPL) keeps moving towards GPL3.
Even if someone forks it, since they aren't the original copyright holder, they won't be able to change the license from 2 to 3.
Keeping it at GPL2 could be one way to ensure it dies eventually...
Technically he's not nuts on this particular issue either, as this issue has been talked about possibly affecting the Linux kernel at some point too.
This isn't some imminent problem for either the kernel or MySQL, though. GPL3 adoption is steady, but moderate/slow. A GPL2-GPL3-conflict problem for either one is probably years away.
Member since:2008-07-07
Member since:
2007-07-25
How I see it, its only 3 realistic outcomes of this:
Scenario 1) Sun get bought by Oracle and MySQL is still GPL. Anyone can pick up the development if Oracle stops distributing MySQL but must keep it GPL.
Scenario 2) Sun gets bought by someone else and MySQL is still GPL. Anyone can pick up the development if the buyer stops distributing MySQL but must keep it GPL.
Scenario 3) Sun gets bankrupt and MySQL is still GPL. Anyone can pick up the development but must keep it GPL.
What is Stallman's problem exactly? In either case, MySQL is GPL. I thought that was his goal with any rant? If those three choices are the only realistic outcomes of this thing then I prefer Oracle buying it since they have shitloads of money and may be the only way to continue corporate financed MySQL development.
Edited 2009-10-23 05:25 UTC