Monty Suggests a Business-Friendly License That Trends Open 43
An anonymous reader writes "Want to gain some of the benefits of open source software development but not sure how to finance it? According to Monty Widenius, creator of MySQL and MariaDB, one solution could be the 'business source' license. While 'open source friendly' rather than open source, Monty blogged, it is intended to offer a viable alternative for companies that want to 'do development and compete with closed source companies on similar economic terms.' Business source starts out with similar benefits as an OSD-compliant license: the source code is visible and can be used freely by all but a small segment that has to pay (the developing company chooses the segment). Then, after a few years, the license automatically changes to an open source license. Monty recently explained the details of business source, and gave a sample license. (Oh, and not to worry, he notes – MariaDB is and will remain GPL.)"
Capitalist Apologist (Score:3, Funny)
'do development and compete with closed source companies on similar economic terms.'
Or, you know, we just keep doing what we're doing now, which is providing high quality software that's well documented, easily maintained, available to the public for free, and hated by capitalists so much they've sent the IRS after every organization that supports it searching for it's hidden pirate treasure to turn over to the greedy.
Look, let me put it in terms you can understand: If your company is losing market share to a bunch of people who do this for shits and giggles in their spare time, maybe you should be polishing up your resume instead of bemoaning the situation. I mean, that's the free market at work, right? Why are you trying to interfere with the free market Monty?
Stop trying to negotiate with capitalists. They don't undertstand... they're like dinosaurs: They can't see it unless it has a dollar sign on it.