[ale] $1B for MySQL !!!

[Jeff Lightner]

Right.

Sun has actually been moving towards OSS - not away from it.
Supposedly they're even looking into seeing if they can make OpenSolaris
GPL (or GPL2) due to resistance to their own OSS license.   (This they
say is difficult to do because of past proprietary things that they
don't actually "own" so can't completely give away.)

Forking projects has been done many times.   Iceweasel for example was
created just to get rid of some of the logo requirements Mozilla had for
Firefox as I understand it.  OpenSSH is commercial but ssh still lives
on in OSS.   

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Greg
Freemyer
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 9:57 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] $1B for MySQL !!!

2008/1/18 Jerry Yu <jjj863 at gmail.com>:
> what if the current core team plus the user base move towards the
non_GPL
> version?

First, I don't think Sun bought MySQL to convert the MySQL license to
a commercial one.  It would not make sense.  If they did that, I would
expect someone (Google?) to fork the current GPL code and go forward
with it without Sun's involvement.

Back to your question:
If the current GPL version has the features/stability you need, then
it is GPL forever.

If you need enhancements/changes and those are only released with a
non-GPL license, then you have to live with the non-GPL license.  ie.
License changes are not retroactive, once a version of source code is
released GPL, that specific release of source code is GPL forever.

Greg
-- 
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