

A Remarkable Reversal (re Stallman's MySQL letter to EU) - bensummers
http://www.opensource.org/node/477

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jurjenh
I was under the impression that the main reason to choose GPL was that you
(the developer) believed in having _your_ code under that licence. If you
choose to change that position, that should be entirely up to you.

The reason that this is now an issue is because the original author _chose_ to
sell / pass on the software, _including rights_ to sun to do with as they
liked. And they sold to Oracle. And Oracle may choose to release MySQL under a
different licence, which they as the _owner_ are able to do.

All this means that new versions of MySQL released by Oracle may or may not be
available under GPL. I believe they can't make this apply to previous
versions, but I am not a lawyer.

Other people are free to take older versions and improve on them and release
them under GPL, so this may end up being a community-driven fork of MySQL. So
the GPL serves its purpose in a round-about way anyway.

So the whole argument is a moot issue (in my books) anyway. Storm in a teacup
even... unless Oracle chooses to non-GPL MySQL...

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> _I believe they can't make this apply to previous versions,_

Correct. GPL gives all the recipients of the software sufficient rights to
relicense it to anyone they want under GPL. If sun wants to stop licensing
MySQL under GPL to people, they can do so. After that, anyone else who has an
older valid license can license it to you.

> _so this may end up being a community-driven fork of MySQL._

There already is.

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keyist
Well-written, but ultimately one example does not a trend make (wrt rms
'admitting' GPL doesn't guarantee freedom)

Especially when that example is an outlier compared to most of GPL software.
The dual licensing is one aspect, and another is the rare combination of being
on the extremes of complexity and adoption.

If an analogous situation occurred with say Wordpress or Drupal (low
complexity, high adoption), it wouldn't be as big of a deal. Ditto for a high
complexity low adoption project (examples escape me at the moment).

~~~
jacquesm
> (examples escape me at the moment)

Plenty of stuff in the computational biology sphere would fit that I think.

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gaius
Well quite. If Stallman's not happy with the GPL, he's only himself to blame!

~~~
lutorm
If I understand the article correctly, that's not the point. The point is that
_no_ license by itself is enough, because the copyright holder is not bound by
the license.

~~~
gaius
Well, no, it _is_ the point. The GPL doesn't say "no dual licensing", it
doesn't say "GPL takes precedence over other licenses", it doesn't say "rights
revert to FSF if your company is acquired".

Perhaps if it did no-one would use it, but the fact is the MySQL people _did_
use the GPL, and now it hasn't gone the way RMS wanted but no license
violation has occurred so he should butt out. As far as I know his
organization doesn't even have a line of code in MySQL.

