"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:2009-02-28
Even if Oracle dumps it's commitment to MySQL, what's the problem ?
Say Oracle/Sun involvement in MySQL get's dumped, then all those entities that have benefited from MySQL would need to consider the relative importance of MySQL in their software stack and then consider either
- investing time/money in knowing the MySQL technology at the source code level
- finding/creating a new database technology.
Any decent company making decisions on content of their software stack would/should have considered the temporal nature of the supply of a software component;
i.e. availability of software component for the near/long-term future.
These decisions are very important.
The EU should not be hassling Oracle in the context of MySQL's future at the hands of Oracle. Oracle is legally allowed to do anything with MySQL, even dump it. The EU should be satisfied that MySQL is open-source and that this has already established the legal framework for forking the original MySQL.
If Oracle dumps MySQL and a fork does not occur automagically, then all these companies that make business profits due to important contribution of MySQL in their software stack should consider setting up a fund to pay software engineer consultants for on-going maintenance/etc. of MySQL fork.
Sometimes, you cannot always have a free lunch.
Member since:2005-11-13
Yeah, I agree with you.. instead of saying 'If Oracle dumps it", I should've said 'Without funding..."
It's also ironic that one of the reasons open source advocates say you should use FOSS software is so that you're not locked into any one vendor. Sounds like Stallman is concerned that the future of MySQL is dependent upon Oracle ...
Member since:
2005-11-13
I was going to post something of this nature, but you pretty much nailed it. People can talk about Free Software and Free Love all day long, but at the end of the day, it's money that makes the world go 'round. Without proper funding, this project will go nowhere when/if Oracle dumps it.