Fix your licensing model so that mirrors can legally maintain
copies of your documentation, so that I'm not left sitting in the
dark when your website goes down.
What if Oracle shut MySQL down today? They absolutely could. With
the documentation not in the GPL, when Oracle pulls the plug on
the websites, well, goodbye docs. It isn't legal to mirror them
elsewhere.
Jul
22
2009
Another reason to GPL the MySQL docs - the site goes down and documentation is suddenly unavailable.
Jul
20
2009
Microsoft has announced that it is to contribute code to the Linux kernel development effort under the GNU General Public License (GPL) v2. What on earth does it all mean? Here’s our take on the situation. With thanks to Jay Lyman for his contribution to the following:
Q. This is a joke, right?
A. Not at all, although if any announcement is better suited to the image above, we can’t think of one. Microsoft has announced that it is going to contribute code to Linux under the GPLv2.
Q. What code is Microsoft contributing?
A. Microsoft is offering 20,000 lines of its own device drivers to the Linux kernel that will enable Linux to run as a guest …
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Jul
01
2009
There has been no shortage of lively discussion on open source software licenses with recent shifts in the top licenses, perspectives on the licenses or lack of them for networked, SaaS and cloud-based software, increased prominence of a Microsoft open source license and concern over the openness (or closedness, depending on your perspedtive) of the latest devices. Amid all of it, we’re pleased to present our latest long-form report, CAOS 12 - The Myth of Open Source …
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Jul
01
2009
Governments. Governance. Customers wins. And more.
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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have
to.”
Governments
The Examiner provided a two part interview with Daniel Risascher, Office of
the CIO, Department of Defense, on open source at the DoD, while
Government Technology Magazine reported on how open source software and cloud
computing can save government money. Similarly, The UK
Conservative party delivered a paper on the future of open standards,
open source, SOA and cloud for UK Government, while it was
reported that Vienna to …
Jun
19
2009
Red Hat betas Enterprise Virtualization, partners with HP for SOA. And more.
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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have
to.”
# Red Hat announced that its Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of products is now available for beta testing.
# Red Hat collaborated with HP on SOA.
# David Megginson published mixing GPL and non-GPL: a different perspective. A new take on the MySQL/MariaDB storage engine debate.
# UK Government CIO shed some light on “G-Cloud” plans and how the new open source policy provides an opportunity.
# WAZI: …
[Read more]
Jun
02
2009
Cloudera lands funding. SourceForge acquires Ohloh. Novell reports Linux growth. And more.
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Cloudera shows signs of progress
GigaOM reported
that Cloudera raised $6m Series B funding from Accel and Greylock
and is now looking beyond web applications to wider
enterprise adoption of Hadoop. Cloudera also announced its first
certification program for Hadoop.
Open source goes mainstream in the UK
There have been signs of change recently with regards to open
source adoption in the UK, which has traditionally lagged behind
the rest of Europe and the US. CBR Magazine provided an analysis of …
May
27
2009
The spirit and intent of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GPL license are right on target. However, we must be careful to ensure that the GPL license is interpreted in a manner fulfills the spirit and intent behind its framing. Richard Stallman and associates set out to draft a license agreement that ensures that free software remains free. They didn’t want to see open source become corrupted with the insertion of proprietary code that would eat away at the freedoms they envisioned.
To protect the eternal purity of the open source software, they created constraints on how proprietary code can interact with the GPL code. Their one weapon in this battle is the automatic and forced expansion of their GPL license to any code that integrates with the base GPLed code. I often refer to this process as acting like a virus. I don’t use this term to infer nefarious intent any more than viral marketing infers nefarious intent. On the …
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May
21
2009
Following the launch of the Open Database Alliance some people have assumed that it is only a matter of time before MariaDB becomes the de facto replacement for MySQL.
That assumes that Oracle will allow the development of MySQL to stagnate, either deliberately or through neglect - something that we have expressed our doubts about, but even if that were the case it appears that the GPL (or more to the point MySQL’s dual licensing strategy) may restrict the potential for MariaDB.
Curt Monash recently raised the question of whether closed-source storage engines can be used with MySQL (and, by …
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Apr
29
2009
As you may or may not know, long long ago (in this universe) I used to be the MySQL documentation team Yes, a team of one. This was 2001. It was a great and interesting time. The current much extended team is doing a great job with the now much bigger set of docs!
Today, I find myself disagreeing with my former colleagues on one particular aspect, namely its licensing. You see, the documentation has never been released under an open license, it used to be plainly copyright all rights reserved, and later some rights were granted to distribute the docs together with the server.
Statements made earlier by Karen Padir regarding possible opening up of the docs license filled us with hope. Then, Stefan Hinz (the current docs team lead) wrote a blog entry MySQL documentation: no license change. Some of the arguments there we can …
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Apr
29
2009
By now many folks know that MySQL documentation is not changing its license. This is an issue with many sides, but before I go through them, I want to address a comment made by Masood Mortazavi:
People who are interested in forking the server — and potentially interested in creating what is in effect separate communities of their own — should probably develop their own docs for their own forks.
(There is a cost involved here, I know. However, it should be a cost worth paying if developers of forks really believe in their work. MySQL AB certainly paid that cost in developing the docs while it had already made the code itself freely available under GPL. So, the playing ground among all forks, etc., …
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