Re: Oracle buys Innobase

On Sat, Oct 08, 2005 at 02:11:54PM -0700, felix(at)crowfix(dot)com wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 08, 2005 at 10:31:30AM -0500, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>
> > What it comes down to is this. MySQL is dual licensed. You can use
> > the GPL version, or the commercial version. In order to sell the
> > commercially licensed version, MySQL must have the rights to all the
> > code in their base. So, in order for MySQL to sell a commercail
> > version of MySQL with innodb support, they have to pay innobase a
> > bit to include it, or rip it out.
>
> I don't understand. If both MySQL and Innodb are GPL licensed,
> commercial or not should make no difference, and they can add all the
> GPL changes they want o the last Innodb GPL release.
>
> What am I missing?

MySQL isn't GPL, it's a modified GPL. But the real issue is that they
can't use the GPL licensed InnoDB in their commercial product. They have
to obtain a commercial license for that. And I suspect Oracle's going to
want more than they can afford for that license.

Though AFAIK there wouldn't be anything illegal about someone with a
commercial license of MySQL using the GPL'd version of InnoDB... but of
course if they did that they'd have GPL'd software again, so no reason
to pay for the commercial license of MySQL.

This is the first time I can think of where software being GPL'd might
actually hurt the open-source community.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
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