Brian Aker Responds To RMS On Dual Licensing

krow (Brian Aker, long-time MySQL developer) writes "Richard Stallman's comments on the Oracle Acquisition of Sun left me scratching my head over his continued support of closed-source licensing around open source software. Having spent more than a decade in the MySQL community, I feel that his understanding of the dual-license model is limited, and is at odds with his advocacy of free software. For this reason, I believe his recent statements concerning it need to be addressed. By pushing for the right to turn GPL-licensed software into the heart of a proprietary business model, he is squandering an opportunity for advocacy of open source within the European Union."

Comments

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[Toonol]

Shouldn't they have that right? If I develop something and license it under GPLv2, I should be able to decline to ever relicense it to GPLv3.

Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

I met with Monty a few months ago and could not convince him that he could carry out his business although the MySQL server was under the GPL. He appears to be locked into some GPL FUD that MySQL got from a lawyer in service of selling the commercial license even though - IMO - you've never needed one to run the server, just a few of the client libraries.

So, Monty is now attempting to rebel against the GPL unnecessarily because of this false conclusion.

Or perhaps his real strategy is to kill the Sun/Oracle MySQL business, leaving him and his company in an advantageous position.

What makes this doubly strange is that Monty has been paid. Something around USD $100 Million for about 10 years work - a pretty good rate, IMO. Whatever he put into MySQL, he got compensated for. And thus I don't see that he has much moral standing on this issue.

Bruce

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[krow]

Hi Bruce!

Please note that I say nothing about the effectiveness of dual licensing as a business model. Pay-day loans exist as a business model, but I do not find that they are healthy for the communities that they exist in.

Richard is choosing to ignore the overall health of community interaction in order to favor a business model that is in direct conflict with "free software". This is what I find to be sad in his actions.

The fact that he is squandering his opportunity to further the cause of free/open source is shameful.

-Brian

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[ComputerSlicer23]

I've read both the links, and it sure seems like both you and RMS came to exactly the same conclusions. You appear to be disagreeing on the justification of that if I understand it correctly. I'm not trolling, I'm honestly confused, and think that understanding would be enlightening. You appear to be saying: "Oracle should not be allowed to own MySQL" (or at the very least, it's bad for Free Software/Open Source for that to happen). From the open letter RMS signed:

Defenders of the Oracle acquisition of its competitor naively say Oracle cannot harm MySQL, because a free version of the software is available to anyone under GNU GPL version 2.0, and if Oracle is not a good host for the GPL version of the code, future development will be taken up by other businesses and individual programmers, who could freely and easily "fork" the GPL'd code into a new platform. This defense fails for the reasons that follow. MySQL uses the parallel licensing approach to generate revenue to continue the FLOSS development of the software. If Oracle acquired MySQL, it would then be the only entity able to release the code other than under the GPL. Oracle would not be obligated to diligently sell or reasonably price the MySQL commercial licenses. More importantly, Oracle is under no obligation to use the revenues from these licenses to advance MySQL. In making decisions in these matters, Oracle is facing an obvious conflict of interest – the continued development of a powerful, feature rich free alternative to its core product. ...

I think RMS is over the top, but generally follows his principle to a fault. So the assertion that he's failing the Free Software Principles strikes me as odd. You've got plenty of credibility as a major MySQL (and derivatives) developer. If I keep getting the source code, I'm not sure I see the problem. Now that somebody who isn't Free Software friendly owns the copyright seems like a crying shame (in order to upgrade to GPLv3 will take a total re-write). The fact that only Oracle will be able to sell a commercial license doesn't seem like a bad thing for Free Software. It seems like a really bad thing for all the folks that wanted to buy a commercial license to avoid being a part of the free software community. Again, I'm just trying to understand your perspective. I think you have a salient point, but I'm not able to see what the significant difference in yours and RMS's opinion is. From what I can tell, you both clearly agree on the outcome, just not the justification. I think if you can clarify this it would be enlightening to me personally, and many others.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

Please note that I say nothing about the effectiveness of dual licensing as a business model.

Hi Brian,

You do, you just don't couch it in those terms. Many - certainly not all - of us need a business model to justify the production of Open Source software. Certainly that was the case for MySQL AG while Monty and you worked there. I very strongly doubt that you would have been able to operate the company while paying yourselves without the dual licensing paradigm which you and the company espoused at the time.

So, what you said was:

Dual licensing is anti-open source.

Actually, it isn't anti-Open-Source at all. It's pro-proprietary-software. You're confusing the two. It is also pro-Open-Source in that it effectively funds its development.

I am really scratching my head regarding your moral position here. It's the license model you promoted. You got paid a salary. You produced a work-for-hire and the company had all rights to it. You sold the company, and you got paid again through your stock.

IMO, what you should do is let Sun and Oracle do what they wish with the ownership of MySQL, as the GPL copy will persist forever and you have freedom to continue its development, and your customers can use that server with their proprietary software without a problem. Sun/Oracle can develop or sink their MySQL version as they like, and we don't care because our version lives on. Ignore politics on a mailing list, everybody has a right to carry it out and you can have another, moderated, list if you don't like it.

And please stop promoting the FUD that the GPL and Sun's rights block you and are somehow unfair to your business. It doesn't, and isn't, and you've been compensated so far beyond the merely "fair" that your protests sound inappropriate.

Bruce

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[DragonWriter]

Although many small companies claim to have made money from an Open Source based business, there is no evidence that they actually have because they haven't published their financial information.

Published financial information is not the only evidence that a business is making a profit. Simply remaining a going concern for an extended period of time is evidence that the business is making money. OTOH, published financial information is no more than a written claim of facts, which is no different than the claims made by other companies.

If you instead of "published their financial information" you mean "released independently audited financials as is required of public companies and certain others", which no one, profitable or not, that isn't subject to such mandates generally does, well, those are a little bit stronger evidence than bare statements (though there are certainly plenty of examples of audited financials being inaccurate, so arguably the difference between those and simple statements is one of degree rather than kind), but all that really shows is how many open source businesses are subject to audit and disclosure regulations, not how many and which are actually making money.

Even if we were to suggest the "published financials" standard and grant that MySQL and RedHat were the only ones for which there are evidence of profit:
1) The sample size of 2 wouldn't be enough to draw conclusions about what viable models are available,
2) Even if #1 wasn't true, RedHat doesn't use the MySQL-style assignment-and-dual-licensing model for most of its products (as far as I know, it uses the "open source + support" model primarily), so if, as you claim, those two companies were the entire universe of evidence of profitable open source companies that exists, and any generalization was to be drawn from that evidence, the generalization that would have to be drawn is that the MySQL model is not the only viable model, not your conclusion that the MySQL model is the only viable model.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

I do not for work which I personally do (aka if you check you will find that I lean toward BSD).

Also, I believe people are free to do whatever they like with what they produce.

Oh come on. You were a company representative for how many years? You promoted MySQL to a great many different communities under the license scheme it had at the time.

And you're being self-contradictory. If people are free to do whatever they like with what they produce, why isn't the Oracle-Sun partnership free to do what they want with the copyrights that Sun bought?

What I object to is Richard's comments which I find counter to the notion at what is at the center of notion of the gpl.

I seem to remember the fsf suggesting once that developers assign copyright to them to block dual license strategies.

Richard would have much rather that Monty had donated the copyright to FSF 10 years ago. He didn't. He chose to make himself somewhere in excess of 100 Million dollars on the software through selling a dual-licensing company, and now he, through you, is complaining that he shouldn't have been allowed to do that.

Well, if Monty really thinks so he should get together some other investors and purchase the copyright.

You are welcome to do whatever you like with whatever you write Bruce, but I wouldn't suggest that other developers contribute their work to you, just so that you can change the license and make a buck off them.

Don't you realize how hypocritical this sounds? You made USD$1.1 Billion off of them!!!

Then, you sold the company, fairly, and Monty took a king's ransom in profit, and no doubt Brian took home some cash too.

I can't see that you have the slightest ethical stance to complain.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[MichaelSmith]

AdaCore is another. Their business model does include dual licensing but for me, their support services are of more value.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

I interviewed at Cygnus reasonably early in the company's existence. Most of my interaction was with John Gilmore. John was a very rich man from his stock proceeds as the 4th employee of Sun Microsystems. For most of their existence he has been the main financial source behind EFF and FSF.

So, I am not sure how long Cygnus ran on "a few thousand dollars". Also, we had no proof that they were profitable, either, when picked up by Red Hat.

Yes, a private company has little incentive to publish its financials. But the corollary of this is that most of them are lying about their financial status, all of the time.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you realize how hypocritical this sounds? You made USD$1.1 Billion off of them!!!

Then, you sold the company, fairly, and Monty took a king's ransom in profit, and no doubt Brian took home some cash too.

I can't see that you have the slightest ethical stance to complain.

Bruce,

What made you think that Brian had taken home some extra cash? Any facts or any guesses? What if, in the result if this transaction, Brian was just reimbursed for an inadequate compensation for his tenure as a manager at MySQL that had required from him at least 60 hours of work every week?

Of course I can't speak for Brian, but I can speak for myself. When working at MySQL my average salary was approximately 30% lower that the average salary of an engineer of the same qualification at Microsoft (I lived in a suburb of Seattle). Practically no bonuses for 5 years (once they gave me a bonus of $500). Pretty poor benefits. 10-12 hrs long working day.

If you take my income for 5 years and add the cash I received from exercising all my options you'll get slightly more (10-15% more) than an average software developer of level 4 earned in my area for the same period of time. What was my position? What does your imagination prompt you?

I've heard that the founders got $100M. According to my estimate 20 most valuable core engineers from MySQL Server development got less than $3M by cashing out all their options.
Nobody told us where the remaining money had gone. So we could only guess.
Most probably the main bulk of them could be found in the coffers of our investors, in other words, of those people, who, starting from the spring 2006, focused exclusively on how to inflate the price of the company and ruthlessly suppressed any attempts to invest into adding real values to the product.

Taken all this into account could you explain me, please, why Brian, or I, or any other developer from MySQL have to have any moral obligation towards the company that bought MySQL?

Re:groklaw's take on this

[Anonymous Coward]

Groklaw has an interesting take on this, full of conspiracy theories.

See, for example, this comment, where PJ is talking about Monty, and says:

I have come to suspect he's a double agent.
And I believe the beneficiary will be Microsoft.

Wow

Groklaw is turning into the Troofer site for the realm of technology law.

PJ did great work on shining the light of day on SCO, but damn, Groklaw is turning into the professional athlete that played about a decade too long in a futile search for former glory.

Re:Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[harlows_monkeys]

It's irrelevant because the same objection could be raised for any pair of incompatible license. E.g., if MySQL were under GPLv3, you could object that a fork could not bring code that is GPLv2-only. There is a plenty of free software under GPLv2, and other free non-GPL licenses, that can be used with a forked MySQL.

In fact, most, if not all, significant open source databases are under licenses that, if compatible with GPLv3, are also compatible with GPLv2, and these are the most likely outside places code would come into a MySQL from.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Bruce Perens]

Although copyright is the most significant law providing protection of the book's content, it is not the only one. There is an implicit license in the publication of a book and the lawful offer of that book for sale. Without it, you'd have no right to either purchase or read the book, and could, for example, be prosecuted under trade secret law.

Bruce Perens on crack?

[gr8_phk]

The book you bought had a license, you simply did not have to agree to it. You're bound to it anyway.

WTF? You're bound by copyright law when you buy a book. Nothing more, nothing less. What is this license you speak of? Where do I find it? What makes it binding? How do I violate it?

Re:Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[petrus4]

The acquisition of MySQL by Oracle will be a major setback to the development of a FLOSS database platform, potentially alienating and dispersing MySQL's core community of developers. It could take several years before another database platform could rival the progress and opportunities now available to MySQL, because it will take time before any of them attract and cultivate a large enough team of developers and achieve a similar customer base.

I will link to PostgreSQL again, here, and probably again get modded down to -1 Redundant or Overrated, by GPL fanatics who don't want anyone to know that Postgres exists, because of the fact that it uses the BSD license.

Of course, given the way I've written the above, they will probably try and perhaps use that as an excuse to appear more legitimate, by down-modding this to -1 Troll or Flamebait, instead.

Re:Free software/open source diffs aids understand

[onefriedrice]

The open source movement is interested in a development methodology aimed primarily at businesses, not framing issues in terms of user's software freedom. Open source proponents aren't taught to think in terms of user's software freedom.

Umm, no. The supposed "Free" software proponents like to try to make this distinction, but unfortunately it's bogus. You think some coder has business in mind as he contributes to Apache projects or zlib/MIT/BSD licensed projects? Haha, right... He has the users of his software in mind (which probably includes himself), and that's not any different than someone who is contributing to GPL software.

If you want to make a distinction, it's that so-called "open source proponents" realize that businesses may also be users, and they don't have a problem with that or forcing users to meet certain obligations with respect to modifications and distribution. That's all. As someone who agrees with the ideals of "copyleft" and the GPL, it might stroke your ego to think that your kind are the only ones who have the user's freedoms in mind ("think of the users!"), but perhaps its good if a little truth helps deflate some of that for you.

This too can lead to the loss of software freedom.

Software licensed under Free licenses such as MIT, zlib, and BSD can become less free no easier than can GPL software. I know this may fly in the face of the dogma you've always thought concerning how the GPL is supposed to be more protective of users' freedoms. In reality, if a company cannot meet the requirements of the GPL, we are no better or worse (in terms of the amount of public code) even if said company finds some BSD-licensed code to build off of and keeps their changes proprietary. Their alternative would be to build everything in-house, and it will still be proprietary anyway. On the other hand, many companies (that are legally able) do contribute their changes back to Apache, MIT, zlib, BSD-licensed projects every day (even if they have no legal obligation), as they do GPL projects. These two facts combined with the realization that code which has been licensed freely cannot then be retracted (there will always be a public fork) should be enough to make obvious to you that the popular assumption that the GPL is legally or morally better for users' freedoms resides on shaky ground.

The GPL is a decent license, although considerably more complicated than most people and projects need. It does have one notably interesting feature, although ironically (and arguably) it is related to user freedom in a negative way, which is what this article is about: the GPL can be used alongside a proprietary one. That's not something that is easily accomplished with other Free software licenses, but I don't consider it a bad thing. It's the one unique feature that really makes the GPL worthwhile in my estimation.

Umm, no

[pem]

Maybe a strict literal reading says the software is evil, but:

That's unethical, they shouldn't be making any money.

is a quote directly addressing the proprietary software businesses. (Read the question.)

Since, for at least part of my life, I was a sole proprietor delivering proprietary software solutions, then, according to Stallman, I was acting unethically.

I also believe that he said I was evil. I will grant you that, in parsing English grammar properly, he might have said the software was acting evilly, and not me, but at the same time, I will have to assert that IMHO you are, deliberately or not, being obtuse about what he really meant.

I mean, it's pretty fucking obvious to me that he called me evil and unethical. YMMV.

Re:Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[hrimhari]

It seems legally unsound to me to take a product licensed under GPL2 and be able to mix it with any less permissive license without being the original copyright owner.

My understanding from the letter is that the GPL'd MySql is a great actor in the free software arena, but it gets so far thanks to its dual licensing.

From there, it says that forks would be much less successful because they would have dual licensing denied since GPL2 would not allow it and they wouldn't be the original copyright owners.

It's probably an exageration to get the attention of the EU Commission, but it seems rather obvious that Oracle acquiring MySql would not be good to users, less to free software, which justifies having Mr. Stallman's signature in that letter.

That's probably why the dual license itself is irrelevant to Mr. Stallman in this particular case -- while not irrelevant at all to the letter's argument -- and I find Mr. krow to be stretching the letter's purpose to a great extent to affirm that Mr. Stallman is defending dual licensing per se. It's a call to arms to save MySql, not dual licensing.