[ILUG] Mother of God!

[Justin Mason]

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kevin lyda writes:
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 09:54:15AM -0800, Justin Mason wrote:
> > I wouldn't trust Oracle's intentions one bit -- and losing Sleepycat's
> > work would be painful. There is always PostgreSQL to replace MySQL though,
> > right?
> 
> You can't lose MySQL.  It's GPL'd.  And it has contributions from
> non-MySQL people.  So future releases would have to honor that license
> unless they rewrite all the parts they don't own the copyright to.
> 
> Postgres is under a BSD license.  If Oracle bought Postgres, they could
> close it up and you'd be stuck at the last public source release.

Sure.  My reference to MySQL was a reference to MySQL's underlying storage
layers; MySQL without a storage layer supporting transactions and all that
fanciness, wouldn't be half as useful for large users/customers.  in my
opinion that's where Oracle wants it.

Now look, you've got me googling ;)

Here's some comment from last year, when Oracle bought InnoDB:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/your_money_or_your_mysql.html
http://devtoe.blogspot.com/2005/10/oracle-buys-innodb-will-fork-save_09.html

Also, note that GPL'd software can indeed be "killed off" by an acquirer,
assuming all the copyright holders assent to changing the license from GPL
to something less open.   (This is why copyright assignation for
contributions is a double-edged sword, and is more of a danger for
products that come from companies, with single-source commits, rather than
communities as a patchwork of contributions.)

There's a good thread here:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-advocacy/2006-02/msg00040.php

Of course, they *could* have friendly intentions, but if you trust
Larry Ellison, I have a bridge for sale ;)

- --j.
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