MySQL was developed buy MySQL AB and they owned copyrights to the code. They provided dual licensing option, GPL and commercial licence. It made sense for Orac

MySQL was developed buy MySQL AB and they owned copyrights to the code. They provided dual licensing option, GPL and commercial licence. It made sense for Oracle to buy the company because they were only ones who could sell commercial licensees. Under BSD that would have not been possible. If the licence would have been 3 years of GPL, then BSD, Oracle would have bought only three years monopoly to sell commercial licensees to the software. After that, owning the copyright would be mostly meaningless. Monty Program Ab (company developing MariaDB) is now restricted to GPL/LGPL fork of the MySQL (that's what MariaDB is) they are not able to sell closed source versions. Personally, I don't see problem with this. I guess it just limits the money making abilities of Monty Program Ab.