Re: Nusphere/MySQL-AB arguing

Bruce Momjian said:

> My guess is that Nusphere wants to create a MySQL community like ours.

Not sure you can "create" something like the PG community. I have to say that this is one of the most informed and overall polite (you can tell I'm British can't you :-) online communities I'm involved in.

The postfix lists have a lot of know-how, but people can be a little grumpy at times (mind you - if PG had to interoperate with hundreds of broken systems you'd get a bit fed up at times)

I'll take this opportunity to send a big "thank you" to all the PG developers not just for the software, but for the help they provide users like me (special mention for Tom who never seems to be off the lists and Justin for organizing techdocs which has blossomed over the last few months).

> Another aspect of the issue that Jan mentioned to me is that MySQL
> sells a non-GPL version of MySQL. This doesn't have the GNU
> restrictions on code additions, allowing proprietary binaries to be
> distributed like our BSD license. They can do that because they have
> full copyright to the code. Having an open-source community would
> prevent this. I am not sure if Nusphere is distributing the GNU or
> non-GNU version of MySQL. Perhaps that was part of their agreement
> with MySQL AB.

GPL and "ownership" of a project don't seem to mix without technical supremacy (not superiority - think air superiority vs supremacy). I can't see IBM's journalling FS for linux having the same problems.

I seem to remember there being a lot of pressure for MySQL AB to "open source" their DB when they went GPL. Part of their thinking might have been practicality - I spent half an hour reading through their licence, but I'm guessing a lot of people saw they could download it for free and left it at that.

Maybe they didn't plan out all the consequences though.

> Overall, very confusing and sad to see.

Confusing - well, this sort of stuff is bound to happen as business meets open source - shame the lawyers had to get involved though.

Sad - definitely. MySQL is a bloody good bit of software (granted, not what you'd call a full RDBMS, but then you don't always need a full RDBMS).

Personally, I'm hoping they sort this out with the minimum of recriminations (I know I'm not switching lists in the next few years no matter how many optional transaction systems MySQL adds).

- Richard Huxton