
MySQL man pages license change is a bug - tomaac
http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512
======
MDCore
I prefer to imagine Larry Ellison wringing his hands saying "Curses! And I
would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids!"

Also he's in an abandoned fairground for some reason.

~~~
moomin
In front of a sign saying "Scott McNealy's Open Source Wonderland"

~~~
skyebook
Unfortunately, Oracle shut down the Wonderland project as well.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Wonderland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Wonderland)

------
freehunter
We've seen this twice in two days now. Facebook is blocking Tor except that
maybe they're not. MySQL is now under a new license, except it's not. The
alarmist headlines not waiting for a response from the newly-damned
organization, instead issuing a retraction after everyone has freaked out.

Will the tech community ever get past the manufactured controversy and knee-
jerk reaction we lambast the mainstream media for?

~~~
pessimizer
More like Facebook is blocking Tor except it was an accident, and MySQL is now
under a new license except it was an accident. The idea of shaming people away
from pointing out, and yes, speculating on the motives for these changes is a
terrible idea for a forum. And if these things hadn't surfaced on HN, do you
think they would have been corrected so quickly? What would the the "newly-
damned organizations" be posting a response to?

Will HN ever get past all of the whiny meta about what other people are
posting or upvoting?

~~~
benbeltran
Kind of an aside, but still relevant to part of your post. Whining about the
content and whining about the meta whining is part of any sufficiently old
community. I can recall from communities I've managed, and from ones I've
participated in there's /always/ metacommentary and metametacommentary. The
best thing to do in these cases is not to engage it. But no, HN will never get
past all the whiny meta and there's very little we can do about it except
letting it slide :(

Quick Edit: This is one of the reasons why I love discourse, it encourages
metadiscussion in a separate part, and while it doesn't keep it from
contaminating, it seriously helps a lot to focus it and guide it.

~~~
jholman
benbeltrain: How does that work in Discourse?

lsiebert: How does that work on Metafilter?

~~~
benbeltran
Well, in discourse it's more convention than anything. But the first category
created, is a `meta` category. But this explains it better:
[http://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-
meta/5249/2](http://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-meta/5249/2)

------
mdip
I found the jump to assume that Oracle decided to stick it to the MySql
community telling of the community's trust of Oracle's commitment to MySql as
an open source database (and not just from the echo chamber that Hacker News
can be sometimes ... I was greeted with this news upon starting work this
morning from two different colleagues, neither of which frequent this site).

My sense is this originates from a few perceptions of Larry Ellison and
Oracle: (1) Oracle does give a whip about Open Source software. (2) Oracle
charges so much for their primary RDBMS technology that it would only be
natural for them to undermine MySql as an open source database technology (a
view I, personally, share despite evidence to the contrary). (3) As a tech, in
a past life, I've had to support Java on the client side for some really
poorly written Java apps. Aside from the experience being utterly awful due to
this horrible app, I have little trust for a company that installs toolbars
alongside critical patches and then defends the practice when called out.

I'm finding my view of Oracle is so negative (maybe I've been supporting
Oracle software for way too long?) that I'm not going to be fully convinced
this was a bug until the "wrong set of copyright headers" is fixed. That's
pretty sad since it makes little sense that Oracle would relicense just the
man pages in some sort of conspiracy to squeeze a dime out of its customers.

Either way, it's always a good reminder of my personal favorite variation of
Hanlon's razor: Where there are gaps of understanding, people jump to the
worst possible conclusion.

------
brey
saw that coming.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)

~~~
btilly
When you combine Hanlon's razor (Never attribute to malice that which can
adequately be explained by stupidity) with Clarke's law (Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) you get Grey' corollary
(Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice).

Anyone who has sufficient exposure to any large bureaucracy will have examples
of the last to share. Which then raises the possibility that (as is happening
currently with Bank of America) the possibility of advanced stupidity is used
to cover actual malice.

~~~
diminoten
...which leads us right back to Hanlon's razor (it's probably not malice, just
stupidity).

~~~
btilly
But this time with the "Never" somewhat qualified.

~~~
diminoten
The "Never" isn't literal in the original razor.

~~~
jholman
Yes, it is literal.

Hanlon's razor is advice about what predictions you should make (or which
hypotheses you should advocate, if you like). It says that when you don't know
whether something is malice or stupidity, you should never predict/theorize
the former.

~~~
diminoten
If the 'never' is literal, then it's attempting to establish a universal
truth, and is entirely useless as that universal truth is incorrect.

If it's not literal, then it's argumentative hyperbole and should be
interpreted as "usually" or "most often". In this case the truth of the
statement is intact and can be a useful guide.

So either you're right and the saying is worthless, or I'm right and the
saying retains useful meaning.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If the 'never' is literal, then it's attempting to establish a universal
> truth

No, its not.

As a statement about predictions, its about likelihood. "Never assume malice
when incompetence is plausible", even if taken literally, need not be an
attempt to establish that it is universally true that when both are plausible,
malice is always the _correct_ prediction; it is a sufficient premise that
there are no circumstances in which both explanatiosn are plausible where
malice is more likely.

~~~
diminoten
IF you CAN attribute something to stupidity, THEN YOU MUST. That's what it'd
be saying if you took it literally. It's not a statement about prediction or
tendency.

It does NOT say "malice is plausible" it says "malice is IMPOSSIBLE, when you
CAN attribute an act to stupidity."

------
morgo
More official comment: [http://insidemysql.com/the-mysql-man-pages-are-
available-und...](http://insidemysql.com/the-mysql-man-pages-are-available-
under-the-gpl/)

~~~
JonnieCache
That is the most amazing banner image I've seen on any blog ever.

~~~
mdda
It's interesting that in order to avoid the guy's head leaning over at exactly
the same angle in every picture, they flipped the image on the left
horizontally.

~~~
huxley
I can't decide if he's doing the Blue Steel look or Le Tigre.

------
zimpenfish
Severity: OHBUGGERTHEYNOTICED

~~~
maskedinvader
haha, that was a good one :). I guess everyone on HN can keep away the swords
and pitch forks now !

------
SEJeff
This is typical Monty. He cries foul how awful $mysql_owner is and how they do
such bad things. He is the one that sold MySQL to Sun. If anyone is to blame
for the current state of MySQL affairs, it is undoubtedly him.

~~~
daleharvey
This report has nothing to do with Monty

And if you watch his presentations about MySQL you can see he fully accepts
that he made a mistake with the way MySQL grew and he is rectifying that with
MariaDB in which he has invested a significant amount personally

------
huhtenberg
> _started pulling in man pages with the wrong set of copyright headers_

And how has the wrong set of copyright headers ended up on said pages?

~~~
kryten
Applying Hanlon's razor:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

~~~
huhtenberg
Witty. Now please demonstrate how it looks applied to this case.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Replace "malice" with "conspiracy to eradicate open-source MySQL" and
"stupidity" with "bugs in the packaging code".

~~~
huhtenberg
Good, good, almost there. Now elaborate on "bugs in the packaging code" part.

What does "the wrong set of copyright headers" do in a vicinity of the
packaging pipeline and how it came to exist in the first place. It's easy to
throw around flashy one-liners. It's a bit more work to actually try and read
into the facts presented.

~~~
TallGuyShort
As has already been stated on this same page, there's a community edition and
a commercial edition. They're likely part of the same packaging pipeline.

Do not be condescending on Hacker News when someone is responding to your
question. It's easy to jump to conclusions. It's a bit more to actually try
and understand what happened - that is the point of Hanlon's Razor. This may
have been intentional, yes. But it may also have been a bug.

~~~
huhtenberg
> Do not be condescending on Hacker News when someone is responding to your
> question.

Do not dispense unsolicited advice on the Internets. That wasn't a reply. It
was a highbrow remark that was as generic as it was barely applicable. A
proper reply was the sibling comment that pointed at two editions.

~~~
kryten
The context was implied and definitely applicable. This is now becoming
pedantic so let's invoke Godwin's law and stop valuable electrons being pushed
around for no reason.

The nazis did it.

Everyone happy now? :)

------
darnaut
No word yet on why the source code for the MySQL documentation is no longer
publicly available. Was recently and silently made unavailable. This is much
worse than a few man pages.

~~~
inigoesdr
You can download the documentation here:
[http://dev.mysql.com/doc/](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/) Or are you referring to
the scripts that generate it?

~~~
darnaut
I'm referring to the source code that is used to build and generate the
documentation available in that link. The MySQL documentation is written using
the DocBook XML format.

Here is a link to an older version of the page where the documentation was
available:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20121030130559/http://dev.mysql.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121030130559/http://dev.mysql.com/doc/index-
other.html)

See "Documentation Repositories".

------
mathnode
the only thing any mysql/mariadb news does for me is highlight how the average
(and depressingly top voted) hacker news/proggit/slashdot commenter knows fuck
all about either of them.

------
cLeEOGPw
At least this served as a reminder of the possibility of such action from
Oracle.

------
mathnode
I made that comment on a phone. I mostly wish I had not.

