On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 11:05, Chad wrote:
> I am not concerned about Sleepycat revoking their open source license
> for future versions of BDB. I am less concerned about them revoking
> licenses for current and older releases. That would be impossible.
> However this "deal" troubles me and I cant quite put my finger on why.
> I'll try to tease it out. Please bear with me.
>
> As I understand it Sleepycat make most of their money by selling
> commercial licenses to companies who use their stuff but who don't want
> to open source their own code. Companies such as these will in the
> future be required to talk to Oracle to negotiate a new license. So far
> nothing sinister about this.
>
> However, I see MySQL as the future losers here. I cannot see why else
> Oracle would buy both of the MySQL storage engines other than to
> effectively remove both of them from the MySLQ product suite in future
> releases, thereby weakening it. Im just wondering how they are going to
> achieve it though. According to Olson, BDB will still be available
> under the dual license. Lets assume for the moment that at least the
> open source license will still be available. Happy days, unless of
> course the product you own is called "MySQL". Do MySQL or any MySQL
> customers need a commercial license for BDB? I think not. MySQL does
> not as all its code is open source.
Here's where I think you misunderstand how MySQL AB's business model
works. MySQL AB sell a GPL database. The connection libs are GPL. If
you write code that connects to their database through their connection
libs, you have two options: 1: Write GPL code. Note that there's an
exception for PHP code. I'll assume you're talking about folks writing
in C or something. 2: Buy a commercial license from MySQL for each
copy you sell / distribute by means other than the GPL.
So, it's source code is not Open Source, as the OSI defines it, it is
Free Software, as RMS and friends define it, and it is VERY viral if you
use it as such. Basically, either you write GPL code, or you buy a
commercial license.
