4 ms·

A Remarkable Reversal (re Stallman's MySQL letter to EU)

21 points by bensummers 17y ago

gaius 17y ago
Well quite. If Stallman's not happy with the GPL, he's only himself to blame!
- lutorm 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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.
jurjenh 17y ago
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 17y ago
  >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.
keyist 17y ago
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 17y ago
  > (examples escape me at the moment) Plenty of stuff in the computational biology sphere would fit that I think.

21 points by bensummers 17y ago

gaius 17y ago

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

lutorm 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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.

jurjenh 17y ago

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 17y ago
>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.

keyist 17y ago

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 17y ago
> (examples escape me at the moment) Plenty of stuff in the computational biology sphere would fit that I think.