The MySQL petition

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Fri Jan 1 14:41:23 EST 2010


On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 11:19 AM, Ted Roche <tedroche at tedroche.com> wrote:
> Passing on this email. I'd be interested in your opinions of the issues
> raised.

  MySQL is GPL.  Oracle can do whatever they want, but the code itself
has already been freed (as in freedom).  Oracle can't put that genie
back in the bottle.  The most they can do is force the community to
completely fork the project, thereby relinquishing whatever influence
they might otherwise have.

  Turning the cynicism dial up to 11, I'd say what Monty is really
afraid of is that if Oracle shuts down what used to be "MySQL, Inc.",
he would be out of a job, and he might lose stature in the community.
The community might dethrone him.  Right now he's more-or-less in
charge, and his company has a wonderful marketing tool, in that the
name of the project is also the name of his company.  Any corporate
fork would need to do much more marketing.  And Oracle's marketing
department is doubtless much better funded.

  There are alternative scenarios that don't involve rethinking the
Widenius family budget.  People who choose MySQL generally are doing
so because it's not owned and controlled  by a big company who demands
big payments -- in other words, because it's not Oracle, Microsoft,
IBM, etc.  They're unlikely to start handing Larry Ellison bags of
cash just because Oracle now owns the MySQL trademark.  Widenius could
capitalize on that, open up a new shop selling support, services, and
consulting, similar to what he does now.  Of course, he wouldn't own
the copyrights, so he couldn't sell proprietary licenses on the side,
and he's have to compete on his merits only, without the name.  Too
bad, so sad.  But then, it seems to work out okay for Red Hat.

  "Welcome to the Free Software never-going-out-of-business sale,
available at an FTP site near you!" (origin unclear)

-- Ben


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