MySQL Reverses Decision On Closed Source 157
krow writes "I am very happy to be announcing that MySQL will be forgoing close sourcing portions of the MySQL Server. Kaj has the official statement in his blog. No portion of the server will be closed source including backup, encryption, or any storage engines we ship. To quote Kaj 'The encryption and compression backup features will be open source.' This is a change from what was previously posted here on Slashdot. I've posted some additional thoughts on my own blog concerning how we keep open source from becoming crippleware. Word has it that we will also have a panel at this year's OSCON discussing this topic. Contrary to the previous Slashdot discussion, this shows Sun's continued commitment to Open Source."
Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone, including Sun, has the freedom to choose their own license. The Linux community, of all people, should respect that ideal. Unless, of course, you support having a Henry Ford mindset - "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."
Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:4, Informative)
Sun doesn't want the GPL anywhere near ZFS -- and for good reason. The GPL ought to be called the "Me Me Me PL". Let's say Sun did release ZFS under the GPL and it's adopted into Linux. Sun is shut out from any changes unless they release SunOS under the GPL as well. With the CDDL, anyone can use the code (without giving up rights to their own code) and Sun gets back any improvements (without affecting their other code). It's like the LGPL, but with much better granularity.
We see this attitude a lot with BSD/GPL conflicts. When BSD code is relicensed as GPL, the original code is denied access to any changes. Think about that for a minute. "We want you to share your code. So we won't share our changes to your code with you." Free as in "free room and board at gitmo".
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GPL does not give me that freedom.
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And to stay on topic, no, GFS is nowhere close to ZFS and in any case it has an installed base that rapidly approaches zero. ZFS is tested and mature, mostly due to the fact that it is used in Solaris. Nice try though. Not every technological innovation comes f
no onus (Score:5, Insightful)
As a practical matter, I suspect that virtually no one would switch OSes to use ZFS, but for some users this will be a good tradeoff.
Re:no onus (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm reminded of a rather large company in Redmond, Washington that carried on similarly throughout the 90's and early 00's, eventually being zapped in the ass for their hubris.
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Personally I don't really care. Solaris is about where Perforce is--they can still make money, but the leading edge has passed them by, probably forever. The thought of using an OS/distribution with which I couldn't install (say) callgrind in 90 seconds is just about unthinkable at this point.
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Re:no onus (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case with ZFS, GPL is causing problems. There are other operating systems using the ZFS code Sun released, the odd one out is Linux because of the GPL.
Re:no onus (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, yes I know I'll get modded as flamebait for this, but the truth hurts. Don't get me wrong, I use tons of GPL software and have contributed to some as well. I'm just sick of the more fanatical among the OSS crowd acting like it's the only license fit to ever use under any circumstances. As others have noted in this discussion it's also held Linux back in a few areas.
Re:no onus (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:no onus (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, this is nonsense. There is a license incompatibility, yes, but it is because BOTH licenses make requirements the other does not fullfill, not just the GPL. In other words , the license of ZFS does not permit using it in Linux because the GPL does not fullfill the requirements of the CDDL. SIMULATENOUSLY the GPL does not permit combining Linux with ZFS because the CDDL does not fullfill the requirements of the GPL.
There are a lot of trolls here who try to interpret this as the FSF the GPL being fanatic and Sun and the CDDL being more reasonable, the reality is that the the incompatibility arises from similar terms that exist in both licenses, namely that you cannot impose any further restrictions on derived works. Since the set of restrictions in two licenses differ they are incompatible. So basically, if you are going to consider this "a problem caused by teh GPL" then it is as much "a problem caused by the CDDL" and vice versa.
Of course bashing the GPL on slashdot is a lot more fun, but the boring reality is that both Sun and Linus have picked a license of their choice, and they turned out to be incompatible. It is either the fault of both parties or neither. You can't have your cake and eat it.
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I don't actually care WHY they are incompatible, to me its all political crap getting in the way.
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I also read that there were some attribution differences between the licenses.
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"The CDDL provides an explicit patent license for code released under the license. This means that you can use, modify, and redistribute code released under CDDL without worrying about any patents that the contributors of the code (including Sun) might have on the contributed technology. The license also includes a provision to discourage patent litigation against developers by revoking the rights to the code for anyone initiating a patent claim against a developer regarding c
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For instance, it allows someone to statically link together CDDL code with anything else they want, even proprietary software, while still requiring modifications to that CDDL code to be released.
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The odd one out is Linux because of the GPLs restrictions in a few areas.
Sure the engineers might have wanted it incompatible with the GPL but to me it appears to be incompatible with good reason and allows more flexibility.
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You come at it from one side: you see BSD as truly free, and choose to call the relative paucity of protection offered by the BSD license 'freedom'. There's merit in that argument and I won't denigrate it except to say that you get what you ask for
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CDDL code is copyleft, you modify and release it, you release your source. On the other hand it can be linked with any code you want to link it with, unlike the GPL, even if it is statically linked together with proprietary code.
Thats probably a big reason sun went with it, they needed to support code mixing especially somewhere like the kernel with drivers, but still wanted the code to remain in
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patents are evil (Score:2)
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The Linux community CAN'T change to a more permissive license.
Welcome to the bed that RMS, via Linus, has made for you. Please - sleep in it.
You're just upset that there's this cool thingy called ZFS and DTrace and you're smarting because your favorite OS cannot have it in part due to a decision made long ago by one Linus Torvalds.
Sour grapes. Linux/GPL zealots need to stop blaming everyone but themselves for things they've barred themselves from accessing. No one in this world is obligated to release code under the GPL, no matter what RMS would have you believe. Tha
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Novell still (almost certainly) owns the SysV code.
Sun bought a liscence from SCO (that is probably invalid)so Sun could release OpenSolaris.
Novells ball...
Novell could easily wave it off with a stipulation that say... ZFS would become GPL or std BSD...
Sun would have the choice of killing OpenSolaris, or marginalizing it via GPLing the only parts of it that gives it any advantage over Linux.
Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:4, Interesting)
Novell said they have no interest in pursuing Unix copyrights.
Novell is trying to get their 95% portion of the license Sun paid to SCO. By saying the agreement between Sun and SCO was part of the APA between Novell and SCO they are affirming the deal between Sun and SCO. Sun actually helped write SYSVR4 with AT&T before Novell bought it. According to Schwartz, Sun paid AT&T about $100million for rights that basically gave them ownership. What was purchased from SCO were mainly device drivers since SCO's UnixWare had the best x86 support.
What is Novell's position going to be to the public? "We're an open source company but we're going to sue a company for releasing open source?" Nothing good can come to Novell if they challenge Sun.
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But legally, it doesn't look like Sun bought anything in from SCO in reality that legally enabled the release of Opensolaris.
Novell has leverage, if they choose to flex it or not is up to them.
I'm proposing GPL'ing ZFS as a possible bone for the dog, so to speak.
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In addition let me add some history of SYSVR4 which explains why suing Sun over SYSVR4 is so funny.
In 1988 I believe, AT&T and Sun got together to work on SYSVR4. SunOS was primarily based on BSD at the time and a lot of BSD bits went into SYSVR4. Bill Joy, a founder of Sun was also a leading developer of BSD. AT&T and Sun handed off the rights to a seperate entity, Unix Laboratories, to handle licensing so that others can implement it. Sun
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Anyway, according to Schwartz in a 2003 interview he said:
eWEEK: Some critics are saying that its not just Microsoft funding SCO but also Sun, citing the fact that you acquired another license from them recently, received warrants to buy shares in SCO and are losing the most customers in the migration from Unix to Linux. It thus makes enormous sense for Sun to fund SCO, their logic goes. How do you respond to that?
Schwartz:We took a license from AT&T initially for $100 million as we didnt own the IP. The license we took also made clear that we had rights equivalent to ownership. When we did the deal with SCO earlier this year we bought a bunch of drivers and when we give money to a company oftentimes we get warrants, which is part of the negotiations. I have warrants in 100 different companies, we have a huge venture portfolio. I cant do anything about the perception thats out there and to be blunt, I dont care as those people arent going to drive our futureâ"customers are.
Which makes sense considering Sun developed SYSVR4 with AT&T.
From this article [pcworld.com]:
"We're not interested in suing people over Unix," Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry said. "We're not even in the Unix business anymore."
How would it look for Novell, to sue Sun over an open source project? Especially considering Sun is the biggest corporate open source donor [businessreviewonline.com]. By the way, the article doesn't speci
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Why "rather than"?
Because you can't have your cake and eat it too. The law does not allow you to be remedied twice for the same act.
Just like in the example where a salesperson sells something they shouldn't have sold, the store owner cannot get the product back and keep the money from the sale.
Sun already bought out their rights to Unix so if what Novell is saying is true, SCO coudldn't sell them anything. So if Novell's claim of SCO exceeding their authority is true and the deal is invalid, then Sun didn't get anything
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A reasonable argument. At the same time, having the court tell SCO, "you weren't allowed to do that, but you get to keep the money for doing it" would strike me as a miscarriage of justice.
Stuff like that happens all the time. If court found the SCO/Sun deal to be invalid he has no authority to get SCO to give the money back. Just because SCO shouldn't have it doesn't mean Novell gets it. Sun and MS could sue SCO to try and get the money but SCO doesn't really have much left.
But Novell is claiming that Sun did gain rights in the 2003 deal. And I'm still seeing the implication that "SCO exceeded its authority" = "we declare the deal invalid", which I don't think is right. I suspect it's more like, "SCO exceeded its authority, and we want a ruling to that effect so they don't do it again; but we'll honor the deal anyway."
Novell is claiming that in the SCO trial. Nothing has been done with respect to Sun or MS.
I already had this discussion on another thread here [slashdot.org] and not in the mood to go through it again. Basically, it just sounds l
Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:5, Interesting)
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Good for Sun (Score:1, Offtopic)
Sun has been in the back of my mind a lot lately. I like their Sunfire servers and will be needing a decent 2U server in about 6 months. Maybe i'll buy one from them.
Wow good PR works
The whole thing was pointless anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
InnoDB already has an online backup tool, and even if/when they revise their tool to use this new API, it's still going to be theirs, open or closed, not the property of the MySQL Group.
Online backup of the engines for CSV, Blackhole, and Memcached doesn't even make sense. Archive already has a publicly available open source online backup tool.
Online backup makes sense for Maria, I don't see MontyW writing crippleware into his work.
How about MyISAM? I think that work is already done, but, the horse is already out of the barn, in that the online backup drivers for it are already publically available..
Looking even closer, the part that was going to be closed was not even the entire online backup driver set, but just compression and encryption. Any halfway competent developer would be able to hook in the necessary calls to azio, zlib, and openssl, and replicate the work.
So this is a big tempest over something that doesn't matter, and couldnt have happened anyway.
Plus, best practices for backup dont even use or want online backup. The Right Way to backup a real production MySQL instances is via filesystem snapshot, using something like LVM or ZFS.
As a small aside, the Slashdot headline of the original article was not entirely accurate. It wasn't the Sun executives who decided this. It was the MySQL executives. What that means, especially in light of the keynote speeches given by CEO Jonathan Schwartz and VP Rich Green, is interesting, and remains to be publically seen.
Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, that headline and this headline are completely inaccurate, because both mentioned a decision where none had been made.
MySQL had not decided to use a closed source license. They were considering many different licenses, including a closed source license -- but also including the GPL and other open source licenses. No decision had been made. This announcement is the first actual decision on the subject.
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The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB (by me as the then CEO)... [slashdot.org]
The decision was made and then was reversed.
Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway (Score:5, Informative)
The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB (by me as the then CEO)... [slashdot.org]
The decision was made and then was reversed.
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I read Marten's post when the story originally came up. Apparently you didn't. He clearly states that no decision had yet been made. Nothing has been reversed.
Follow your own link.
Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Databases backups over filesystem snapshots? With the assumption that all database commits are automatically filesystems commits, and there is no buffering between those layers? And with no incremental backups through transaction logs?
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You may miss few commits just before the snapshot has been created, but in case the database does buffering, you will miss them anyway when/if machine crashes.
The point is that FS snapshot should give you a backup of the database in a consistent state, which is sufficient for most uses.
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You may miss few commits just before the snapshot has been created, but in case the database does buffering, you will miss them anyway when/if machine crashes.
Or you can miss a rollback because you don't know if you had an incomplete transaction in progress -- they don't all stay in memory.
On the other hand, a backup with transaction log can be made MORE reliable than a filesystem snapshot because it is specifically optimized for this purpose -- state can be reliably recovered even if filesystem is few steps behind, as long as log is committed after filesystem became unwritable (easily achieved by sending it to another host)
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So when you create a FS snapshot with a transaction still in progress, then you will see partial transaction in the log, and maybe rows modified by a transaction which is not explicitly marked as commited, so when you restore from this backup and start the database engine, it will correctly detect it as an unfinished transaction and will not use its data.
The backup with transaction log _cannot_ be made more reliable
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Mod up, if there's anybody still modding this story. Snapshots won't guarantee you a consistent database backup.
Yawn (Score:2)
This isn't much of a change. They hadn't made up their mind regarding what license would be used for the new backup utilities. They just hadn't ruled out proprietary licensing. Now they have.
It wasn't much of a story before, and it's only slightly more of a story now.
Good day for all (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good day for all (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing Sun was able to convince Sun to stick to Sun's official policy.
Re:Good day for all (Score:5, Informative)
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"Pushing" against whom? MySQL ceased to exist as a separate entity once it was acquired.
You know that companies are run by people right? Their not some big robot or computer program. People need time to adjust and get familiar with the new vision of their new company. You don't right click on MySQL AB, select Refactor and expect everything to just change.
Certain initiatives that were started pre buyout continued. When it was detected that those initiatives weren't inline with Sun's plans, it was corrected.
All the 400 or so employees that were with MySQL are now with Sun and they need to g
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An open source company wants to close some of its new features. The "proprietary" software company that bought them wants them to keep everything open.
Somehow, everyone wants to paint the proprietary company in a bad light. The original blog post from the first story never even mentioned Sun but the title on Slashdot was about Sun closing MySQL.
Sun's management has MySQL change that decision and the headline is about MySQL reverting.
There's an obvious bias here that's laughable.
Mickos is
Alternate interpretation of events... (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect.
Re:Alternate interpretation of events... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you not only believe:
1. Sun (a corporation) makes decisions not based on what will bring in the most revenue, but based on what "fanatics" want;
You also apparently believe:
2. The Slashdot crowd has the ability to shape corporate policies to their whims.
I think a reality check is in order.
Sun/MySQL were considering a variety of licenses (including closed source ones). To the extent that comments made on Slashdot (and other online sources) made sense, they were probably taken into account. However, the final decision was undoubtedly what they thought would maximize profits. Yes, maintaining community good-will is probably part of their strategy, since it gives them free advertising (evangelism, etc.) and some free development (patch submissions, etc.).
Frankly I don't see how this isn't a victory for both open-source and MySQL. The community gets open-source code, MySQL gets development and exposure. Win-win.
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"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics who refuse to acknowledge any boundary between open-source MySQL server APIs and closed-source enterprise utilities which call those APIs"
Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect.
MySQL AB needed to generate revenue directly from MySQL as that was pretty much their only product. They were looking for an IPO before Sun bought them so they needed to increase revenues.
Being part of Sun, MySQL doesn't have the same pressure to generate revenues directly from MySQL. Sun/Schwartz's plan is to drive revenue in Sun's other lines from MySQL. Hardware sales, support, etc.
Re:Alternate interpretation of events... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has explained numerous times in his blog that opensourcing your products increases your revenue stream in the long term. I invite you to read in particular this 2-day old post [sun.com] where he answers the FAQ "Why don't you just stop giving your software away?" and gives precisely the example of MySQL.
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In some cases. Here, the hope was that they'll buy a license and support package. If they don't, no revenue.
Further, I'd argue that basing a business on support fees and licenses means that it's against your best interests to ever create a powerful easy-to-use product that DOESN'T need support. If you want income, then complexity and bugs are your friends.
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You don't see far enough. There is more than licenses and support fees. Schwartz explained in other posts that giving away software increases the opportunity for Sun to sell more of other stuff: give your customer an open source database and they will buy more SAN storage, servers, networking equipment, etc !
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And as you said, it "increases the opportunity for Sun to sell more of other stuff". No guarantees. He thinks it will generate move revenue than it consumes. Maybe. Only time will tell.
But that still assumes, like the give-music-away-and-sell-the-t-shirts model, that you have SOMETHING else to sell. What happens when someone spends a year writing a program and that's ALL he has to
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I'd argue that basing a business on support fees and licenses means that it's against your best interests to ever create a powerful easy-to-use product that DOESN'T need support. If you want income, then complexity and bugs are your friends.
That's just another variation on the information-hording paradigm of proprietary software.
It ignores the network effect. If your stuff is easy to use, then it becomes widespread. If it is hard to use, hardly anyone will be interested. It's like having 50% of a $1M market or 10% of a $1B market.
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So to continue the thread around your thought, it only has to be easy enough to suck people in and build a dependency on it. While at the same time not being so complex or unstable that people give up on it and go elsewhere (PostgreSQL).
Just in case you're interested, Lyris is
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Alternative ending (Score:2)
Sad enough this shows how Sun still have a hard time deciding what they want to, or more importantly should do, and if they should just dip their toes a little or go all in.
I do understand peoples critisism for it but it's their property and they are free to do whatever they want with it.
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Lol Slashdot is too much (Score:5, Interesting)
Then Mickos (former CEO of MySQL AB and SVP of Sun Database group) comes here and says that it was MySQL's plan to do this before the acquisition by Sun and that it was in fact Sun who wanted them to release everything to the community. And if Sun had their way it would.
So now that Sun convinces Mickos to change his strategy the headline is "MySQL Reverses Decision On Closed Source"
HAHAHAHAHA
Re:Lol Slashdot is too much (Score:4, Informative)
If anyone in the know had written the original article I doubt they would have put "Sun" in the title. It was pretty much a MySQL decision all along. The original article was not completely wrong, but it certainly was wrong on the Sun part.
Cheers,
-Brian
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I believe that I did mention Sun in the post, and I did so in a positive way. So I do not understand your comment.
Cheers,
-Brian
Re:Lol Slashdot is too much (Score:5, Insightful)
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! SUN DOES SOMETHING BAD!!!!
(actually, it wasn't really sun)
Today's story:
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! MYSQL DOES SOMETHING GOOD!!!!
(actually, sun may have been involved)
Understand now?
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Well I have no ability to edit a previously written story so I can do nothing about what went on before
Cheers,
-Brian
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Then Mickos (former CEO of MySQL AB and SVP of Sun Database group) comes here and says that it was MySQL's plan to do this before the acquisition by Sun and that it was in fact Sun who wanted them to release everything to the community. And if Sun had their way it would.
So now that Sun convinces Mickos to change hi
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I don't see any problem with close sourcing (Score:4, Informative)
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I would completely agree with you on this point. I added the link to my "crippleware" blog entry for this reason. While I believe it is best for the server to be open source, there is nothing stopping anyone from writing closed source extensions to their open source projects. As long as licenses are obeyed and a company acts in an even handed manner I believe that they will avoid creating crippleware.
Cheers,
-Brian
Floating a Balloon to see if it will Fly (Score:2, Insightful)
This has all the hallmarks of a classic PR maneuver - Sun wants to figure out how they can extract more $$ from the high end users of MySQL. They need to find out how the market will react if they start selling closed source MySQL extensions without committing themselves if it goes horribly wrong. So they sprinkle some unsubtantiated vague rumours around and look for the reaction. The reaction was: PostgreSQL. So now they can kill the whole idea with minimal losses and try their next plan for how to
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This has all the hallmarks of a classic PR maneuver - Sun wants to figure out how they can extract more $$ from the high end users of MySQL. They need to find out how the market will react if they start selling closed source MySQL extensions without committing themselves if it goes horribly wrong. So they sprinkle some unsubtantiated vague rumours around and look for the reaction. The reaction was: PostgreSQL. So now they can kill the whole idea with minimal losses and try their next plan for how to "monetize" MySQL some more without pissing off their entire user base and killing the golden goose.
I don't believe for a second that things like this are an accident. These folks are far too smooth to just accidently let this kind of thing drop and run for a week.
I doubt that. When MySQL AB was a separate company and interested in an IPO, they had to find ways to boost their revenues.
While MySQL makes money on support and some of the "Enterprise" tools, their main source of revenue is from companies like Cisco that want to buy a non-GPL license to MySQL to embed it in one of their products. Since MySQL AB offered MySQL in dual licenses, it gives companies that want to include it in their projects, and possibly extend or modify it the ability to keep their chang
Closed source... no wait, open source (Score:2, Funny)
Ha, good one.
Re:ZFS next to be open sourced? (Score:5, Informative)
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It would be great to be able to use ZFS on linux without fuse.
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Re:ZFS next to be open sourced? (Score:4, Informative)
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So is a patch not considered to be a derivative work?
It is, but you can dual-license your modifications under both the GPL and the CDDL.
You distribute your modifications to the kernel to add ZFS hooks as one piece (dual-licensed).
Then you distribute the CDDL-licensed pieces as a separate package, modified to utilize the hooks you added to interact directly with the separate CDDL-licensed package.
Your ZFS hooks enable the the separate package to be 'loaded' into the kernel after it is compil
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Great to see? Want to make a bet? (Score:2)
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* 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 6.0â(TM)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,
where the last item is a change of direction from what we were considering before.
The change comes from MySQL now being part of Sun Microsystems. 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.
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