It was suggested by Monty that the posts I've made about MariaDB are for publicity. This simply isn't true. I would have much preferred a different outcome in my interactions with MariaDB. I figured that they would end up giving me a hard time, and I'd be stubborn and we'd both hate each other for as long as I could keep from leaving. A quick separation actually seems much better in such context. Regardless, I would have preferred to speak amicably to the MariaDB Corporation about switching the license back, or at least moving to the new license at the time of the notification of the community, ie as the LAST checkin in the 2.0 branch. I would suggest they re-release 2.0 as GPL and move 2.1 to the BSL to allow the market to decide if they want to move to 2.1, or even take up 2.0, if they aren't guaranteed important (especially security!) fixes in the older …

Apache OpenOffice.org proposal approved. SkySQL Tekes new funding. And more.

# The proposal for OpenOffice.org to become an Apache incubator project was unanimously approved.

# Rob Weir discussed how the relationship between OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice need not be a zero-sum game.

# Simon Phipps offered his thoughts on the potential positive and negative outcomes.

# Tekes, the main public funding agency for research, development, and innovation in Finland, …

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 …

As I write this, my friend (and eLiberatica chair) Lucian is packing up to fly to Bucharest for this year’s instance of the eLiberatica Electronic Frontier/Free Software/Open Source conference. Sadly, I won’t be participating this year – a commitment to less travel and a new venture make doubly sure that I’m staying home.

Despite the downturn, it looks like this is going to be a great year for the conference: 400 people have registered and the list of speakers is formidable, including: OSI board member Danese Cooper, FSFE founder Georg Greve, MySQL founders David Axmark and Monty Widenius and Zbigniew “Gandalf” Branecki from Mozilla Europe.

If you are in or near Romania, you should try to …

In a blog post today, Stefan of the MySQL documentation team says that the MySQL documents will not be open sourced. Now, I have to go back and review the MySQL CE Keynote that Karen gave, but I'm pretty sure she said to the audience that it was "going to happen". Why would she even bother bringing it up in the keynote if it was never really being considered anyway? There has been little community input on this, and I for one am outraged that a GPL product would not release the documentation as GPL too.

I'm now totally convinced that MySQL does not understand, and will never understand the MySQL community.

Is this an opportunity for Oracle to try to stall community participation in MySQL? I don't want to be paranoid, but this could just be the hints of bold new changes in MySQL strategy, especially considering Karen's …

FSF sues Cisco for GPL violations. JasperSoft and Lucid Imagination raise funding. Sun updates OpenSolaris. WaveMaker launches IDE for the cloud. And more.

Official announcements
Free Software Foundation Files Suit Against Cisco For GPL Violations Free Software Foundation

Jaspersoft Secures $12.5 Million in Venture Funding JasperSoft

Sound Investment Red Hat

Jaspersoft Announces New Community Edition of the World’s Most Widely Deployed Business Intelligence Software JasperSoft

…

Open-Xchange raises Series B funding. The FSF enables Wikimedia’s potential move to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. The “Bilski” decision and software patents. Mindtouch reports revenue growth. And more.

Press releases
Open-Xchange Closes Series B Venture Funding of $9 Million Open-Xchange

OASIS Members Form Committee to Advance Interoperability and Conformance of OpenDocument Format (ODF) Applications OASIS

FSF Releases New Version of GNU Free Documentation License Free Software Foundation

Federal Court Issues “Bilski” Decision Software Freedom …

At the end of the Orlando meeting in January this year when the Sun acquisition was announced, I remember sitting next to MySQL’s co-founder David Axmark in the bus going to some evening event. “What do you want to do now, with so many opportunities opening up?” was my question to him, partly as his friend, partly as his colleague and partly as his line manager. David seemed very confident in the future of MySQL within Sun, but less sure about his own future role.

With that as a background, and knowing David since well over 20 years, I was not all that surprised to read his resignation letter, and in particular his reasoning for resigning:

I have thought about my role at Sun and decided that I am better off in smaller organisations. I HATE all the rules that I need to follow, and I also HATE breaking them. It would be far better for me to “retire” from employment and work with MySQL and Sun on a less formal …

Here are a few pictures from earlier this week taken at CommunityOne and day one of JavaOne. 

Podcasts a comin'

In the next few days I will also be posting a bunch of podcasts I did while in San Francisco including a bunch from key OpenSolaris folks, a post-Distro-smackdown recording,  an interview with the Fedora IcedTea guys and a chat with the JRuby dudes.

 
Mr. Finch exits -- Before …

You've got to respect any individual willing to kick off a presentation with a impression of Kermit the frog.  And not just an impression but a rendition of Kermit singing the rainbow connection.  Well Ben Klemens, tasked with leading the Free Software Foundation's End Software Patents campaign, is just such an individual (the point?  Kermit lied.  There aren't so many songs about rainbows).

I was able to grab Ben after his talk at the Free Software …