The MySQL petition

[Jeffry Smith]

Forgot to send to the list

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 8:43 AM, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Jeffry Smith <jsmith at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> Seems that no one else does either.  Amazing how Red Hat can get all
>> those folks to contribute, but MySQL can't.  Oh, right - Red Hat GPLs
>> their code, and doesn't (as far as I know) require you to assign
>> copyright to them.  Amazing how people respond when they feel they're
>> being treated fairly.
>
>  Woah there nelly.  RedHat was just as bad in some cases.  Take a
> look at the eCos situation from several years ago, specifically, the
> 'Red Hat eCos Public License'.
>

Red Hat bought eCos when they bought Cygnus.  When eCos didn't go
anywhere (probably for the reasons I stated), they stopped development
and switched to a modified GPL
(http://ecos.sourceware.org/license-overview.html).  Apparently they
transfered the copyrights to FSF.  It's now community owned
(http://ecos.sourceware.org/).  I would say it's an illustration of
what I stated - licenses that grant a company specific rights (either
the license or via dual-licensing and copyright assignment) don't
work.  If you grant everyone equal rights (esp if they think someone
can't proprietarize their work without giving back - GPL) it CAN work.

I think Red Hat has learned from this, as near as I can tell, they GPL
everything now.  Look at their EtherPad purchase (although there are
other issues with that due to the miscommunications and attempted
shutdown of the etherpad contracts).