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MySQL CEO Interview
someonewhois writes "MySQL's CEO, Marten Mickos, says 'Open source & MySQL will rise, legal foes will fall', in a bold prediction that legal issues will continue to be ignored as a threat towards open source, and that software patents will harm the industry (well, duh)."
He'd better watch it before Bill Gates makes him an offer he can't refuse, and he wakes up with a penguin head in his bed.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Not much here:
What do you think was the top story in the Linux and open source arena in 2004?
Marten Mickos:None of the legal attacks on open source or Linux have been successful. None of that stuff has gone anywhere. That's the biggest story.
On that subject, MySQL has come to the conclusion that software patents will ultimately be demonstrated to be harmful to the industry. So, we are sponsoring a campaign in the European Union today to educate politicians and decision makers on the negative impact of software patents.
Will harm *him*, but they'll help, for instance, Oracle.
Both are in "the industry". So to make blanket statements like harm "the industry" fall on deaf ears.
If you want to bitch about patents in a meaningful way, at least show how they do harm, by preventing competition by giving one company an unfair advantage.
Also, it's in my opinion that it's only the frivolous patents that harm the industry. It's not the patent system itself that's wrong, it's the abuses of it. "Security holes" that need patching.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
But if open source advocates and creators spend all of their time in litigation, doesn't Open source suffer as a result?
Their creativeness is put on hold, and the money for litigation has to come from somewhere. They usually are not in it for the money, so where does it come from?
Corps with their deep pockets have an advantage; they can sit in a court room all day long, every day for years, dragging out the process and basically smothering out the open source comeptition.
On the plus side, I guess there will always be someone to pick up the fight!
If I wrote something witty, you would say I stole it from somewhere.
Postgre and Firebird are toys.
MySQL is like the playmobile activity center you put in an infants crib, so that one day when he sees a real database he won't be too scared of it.
Thats fine, when you are on the 'right' side of the suit..
Let him get hit with being the defendant on a few IP suits, and i bet he sings a different tune.. One of caution..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As a GIS geek that wants a solution that costs less than $10,000,000.23, I'm hoping that MySQL improves their spatial extensions. Right now I play with PostgreSQL w/PostGIS until MySQL can implement more robust projections (how geography is "laid flat" on a map for those who don't know). From what I gather, and I admit being new to open-source GIS solutions, PostgreSQL w/PostGIS extensions stomps all over MySQL at the moment, but I think it would be in their interest to improve as they have a nice business model and GIS is taking off.
Here we have the CEO of a company saying, basically, that his company is going to do well this year.
And just for making that unremarkable statement, he makes the Slashdot homepage?
News flash! It's the CEO's job to promote the company. They all do that. Even Darl.
what department would that be exaclly?
~/.sig: No such file or directory
Given what I saw on last years 21C3 MySQL 4 will fall flat on its face if someone starts to test the security of this version of the product.
The sas thing is: I am not kidding. Don't use too long usernames on the SQL client-side which could be (by coincidence) the same location where your SAP-System is installed.
Don't get complacent, Mr. Mickos. Don't you dare get complacent. Complacency is the state people get into just before some legal challenge arises out of nowhere and kicks them in the head. The only proper mindset to have with respect to legal issues is paranoia. You have to strategize for every possibility and then some.
The coolest voice ever.
And here I was expecting him to say "Hey, sell your shares, this company and this open source stuff is fucked." Well this is a relief.
That is a rather limited view. Seen that research indicates that softwarepatents actually hinder innovation, one could as well say that it is, at the end, NOT a good things for the economy *as a whole*.
When you have less innovation, ultimately your products and your businesses get behind, which will lead to a far bigger economical deficit then some IP lawyer could ever make the economy 'recuperate'.
On an individual level and short-time period, level, you will have people benefitting and people losing out when sw patents are allowed (or not). On the long run and for the economy as a whole, you will lose out if you create or maintain software patents.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Actually, MySQL is a lot more like shareware. For a real open source RDBMS, use PostgreSQL.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
"Does he really care about the industry?"
Maybe he does, and maybe he doesn't, but that's not the actual point. Even if he would turn out to be a greedy bastard who wanted to monopolise the entire industry (as MS does), the question remains if sw patents are a good idea or not.
Good isn't good for this or that corporation in the short term, but for society in the long term. After all, a patent is a monopoly given by the state, and the state is (supposed to do) what's good for their citizens. Ultimately, in a democracy, *we* define the state. So the question boils down to: is it a good thing for the populace as a whole?
As we all know, monopolies are never a good thing, and the only reason why it is given, is because it is supposed to stimulate further innovation. at least on sw patents enough studies have been done to indicate they don't do that at all, on the contrary.
Conclusion: it is NOT a good thing. (Even when a particular company might profit from it at a given time).
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
What exactly is shareware about the GPL?
Their dual license model is great, but I think they cloud a little the GPL licensing and commercial licensing:
:-)
If you distribute MySQL Software within your organization, you should purchase a commercial license.
GPL is not at all restrictive!! They mention this as being restrictive, basically they represent GPL as a less viable option for many companies than it really is.
Anyway, kudos for being a corporattion willing to tag itself GPL (even if otherwise it would have meant marketshare death)
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
"There's a fine line that needs to be walked when it comes to software patents. Either extreme will stunt growth."
Indeed, and that fine line is: allowing them.
"On the one extreme[...]"
sw patents are hopelessly borked. You can not patch the process up to be sure you only have high quality true software-innovations, and the whole idea of it is flawed in the first place, because software is akin to writing recipes, and it should be governed by copyright, not patents. and thirdly, patents are monopolies given by the state, because it is supposed to stimulate further innovation: all neutral research thusfar has indicated that it doesn't do that, on the contrary.
"On the other extreme[...]"
No, it won't. You seem to ignore the fact that, when software started with it's boom, there WERE NO sw patents. In fact, it can be reasonably argumented that it was just because they didn't existed at the time, that software knew such a high flight. Time and money isn't spend to produce new sw technologies; it is increasingly diverted to the legal departement of the companies. Companies that are flexible and can adapt will survive just fine without sw patents, rest assured.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Do you have any references to good reading material on how software patents hinder innovation? I don't know much about it and would like to read up on some of the arguments.. Specifically how do they hinder innovation?
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
It's always nice to see ppl wanting to learn more.
Anyway, there have been numerous posts in the past to it, but I don't know the links at heart. I do seem to remember the FFII has a page with links to sw-research, as does nosoftwarepatents.com, I think.
Happy reading!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
If you're asking "what legal reason is there?", then the answer is because they decided in their infinite wisdom to GPL the client libraries, which is a more restrictive policy than any of the commercial DBs impose as far as I know.
If you meant "why on Earth would they do that?", then I have no answer. They had to invent a stupid "FOSS License Exception" (see the above link for details) to allow popular non-GPL projects like PHP to offer MySQL support, and have basically removed any chance of commercial software support.
In a nutshell, if you want to use a database in your non-GPL project (whether Free or proprietary) then MySQL is a poor choice. They've already added huge client library restrictions by moving from the LGPL to the GPL, and I don't see any reason to believe that they won't drop the "FOSS License Exception" kludge in the future. Note that I like the GPL - it's a good license and I support its goals - but this seems like a wholly inappropriate place to use it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If MySQL were only licensed under the GPL, it wouldn't be shareware. However, MySQL AB goes to a lot of trouble to make unclear the exact circumstances when you can use the GPL product vs. when you have to buy a commercial license. This campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt is what differentiates MySQL from a FLOSS app.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
(reads again...)
Oh, never mind....
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Yes, MySQL is GPL through-and-through, including its client libraries.
That means that if you want to even support MySQL in your product (e.g. "my product supports MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL"), your product needs to be GPL or you need to buy an expensive commercial license.
It's a long tradition that client libraries are LGPL or BSD or something (which is why the FSF created the LGPL). MySQL broke that tradition, and also threatened the variety in open-source software by disallowing a BSD (etc.) application to talk to MySQL, requiring that it be GPL or commercial.
If I'm not mistaken, that's actually more restrictive than many commercial database licenses.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
You may think what you want about MySQL AB's licensing policy, but sorry, the term shareware is utter nonsense in this context.
Yes, that is a little worrisome that MySQL is creating confusion about the GPL in particular and open source software in general.
However, I'm fairly sure that MySQL is GPL, and no matter what they say, you can do the same things with MySQL that you can with other GPL software.
Except how they made the client libraries GPL instead of LGPL. That, in my opinion, really stands out against the open source community. You can't have a BSD licensed (or whatever else) app support MySQL, it has to be GPL or you have to buy a commercial MySQL license. It goes against not only the interoperation of closed and open software, it also goes against the variety of open source software.
In fact, commercial companies can simply buy a license to avoid the problem, a free software application can't buy a license, so it's GPL or nothing if you want to support MySQL.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
MySQL is so popular, that there are so many host that use it and don't offer PostgreSQL. They both are free, but PostgreSQL is better. Transactions, builtin programming language, GIS functions, extensibile types, etc.
LAMP might be a cool acronym, but Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP isn't the best. On an aside, embedding Perl in web pages might be better than the web page specific PHP.
Here is to a new acronym: LAMP = Linux + Apache + Mod_perl + PostgreSQL.
Happy Martin Luther King Day!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I'm wondering how does someone who is 'ceo' of something that is totally free make money. Service contracts? My host provides free service/consulting for MySQL (icdsoft.com). And besides, it ain't rocket science.
Their policy can be summed up as: "If you're Open Source, we're Open Source. If you're not Open Source, please see the nice people in Sales about buying a license."
So long as your definition of "Open Source" does not include BSD or anything other than GPL.
So it's more like: "If you're GPL, we're free. If you're BSD or anything else, see the nice people in sales.".
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
That's just plainly incorrect. Your code only needs to be licensed under a GPL compatible license. And the BSD license (the newer revision without that nasty old advertising clause) is.
Parent was the funniest thing I've read on /. in a while!
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
No, you're thinking in the wrong direction. A BSD app that's linked against GPL libraries can't be redistributed under the BSD license, and thus becomes de facto GPL. The BSD license is GPL-compatible, the GPL is not BSD-compatible.
Yes, I know that. But it's only de facto. You are still distributing your own code under the BSD license and the GPL code under GPL. Sounds actually very fair to me. It doesn't restrict at all how you can distribute your code as long as it's GPL compatible.
Of course you can't just drop requirements from the GPL'd code and assume that after adding some BSD code you suddenly have more rights over that code, written by someone else...
Once again, I don't think that's neccesarily bad or anything. But if you want to distribute under a BSD license, then you are, as a practical matter, prevented from using MySQL. It's the same thing if you want to distribute a closed source app too, of course, but I think this matters more to many people because the BSD license is also OSS (and thus "on the same side"), and also because the BSD license is often percieved as being "more free" - and thus, using MySQL with your BSD application would make it "less free".
Only if you intend to distribute under the BSD license without the source code, ie. closed source.
In source form, the notion of "the entire work" will in this case be quite unimportant anyway, you do have the right to distribute your work under the BSD license and anyone can take that code and use it in ways that the BSDL allows (but GPL does not). If they want to go closed source, they can use a different DB or buy the commercial version of MySQL and use your product, entirely BSD licensed.
You're missing the point. The people who recieve your product can not, as a practical matter, use it under the terms of the BSD license because it's tied to the GPL via the MySQL libraries. This is the case even if you support multiple back ends. This is exactly what people mean when they talk about the viral aspect of the GPL.
If you support multiple backends and you can at compile time disable linking MySQL in, the resulting binary is distributable without source.