On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 12:30:04 +0000 Rui Miguel Seabra <rms@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 07:29 -0500, Richard Welty wrote:
> > On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:21:55 -0000 Nigel <ncc-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Doesn't the MySQL AB licence allow for non commercial redistribution?
> > > That would allow FC but not AS, ES WS etc.
> > it would allow Fedora distribution, but might blindside businesses
> > that are unaware of MySQL AB's license terms.
> *cof*cof* both of you are wrong.
> MySQL is GPL'ed which allows and is a good incentive for commercial
> redistribution.
> What it is not good for is proprietary software distribution, which is a
> totally _different_ thing.
there are two different philosophies of open source here (as i said
in another posting.) one derives from the spirit of the GPL, and one
derives from the spirit of the BSD license.
by using the GPL instead of the LGPL for libraries, you effectively
drive the software with GPL'd libraries into a niche where some
(many?) businesses will decline to use it. you may see this as good
for open source, i see it as restrictive, lots of people will end up not
using it.
besides, there is the whole blindside issue. how many businesses
right now use MySQL without having examined the license terms,
because their IT guys like it and it comes on the disk? how many
of them are going to be shocked if the fact that they upgraded to
the newest license comes back to haunt them years later.
the potential consequences are severe.
i've worked at the executive level in a couple of businesses. we
do discuss this sort of issue, it affects our decision making, and
this license change would disqualify MySQL from a number of
projects where i've directed that it be used in the past.
richard
--
Richard Welty rwelty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Averill Park Networking 518-573-7592
Java, PHP, PostgreSQL, Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
