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Oracle Responds To MySQL Purchase Concerns
Luke has no name writes "Yesterday we discussed MySQL founder Monty Widenius's objections to the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle. Today, Oracle released a statement to address some of these issues. Among their commitments, Oracle says they intend to continue releasing MySQL under the GPL, allow vendors to produce 'any-license' third-party engines, maintain the Reference Manual, invest millions into the product, and create a 'customer advisory board.' The pledges are still not enough for some, however."
I know I'm going to be modded down for this but why bother with MySQL at all? There are other better free databases out there. MySQL is still not even ANSI 92 compliant yet.
There are a number of MySQL forks, one of which is being operated by Monty's company, under the GPL. They don't seem to need BSD for that.
Bruce Perens.
groklaw quotes from his submission to the EC, pointing out things that he had specifically denied previous to this disclosure.
It sounds as if you could be a little confused about this. MySQL owned the complete copyright to the MySQL server. So, they could commercially license it as well as provide it under the GPL. Most GPL projects do not have this capability, because no one entity owns the entire copyright and the aggregate of all copyright holders do not work together to dual-license.
So, Sun bought the rights to commercially license MySQL, and to enforce the GPL on those who do not have commercial licenses. Now Oracle will have that.
Bruce Perens.
I've switched to PostgreSQL, and I must say that I enjoy looking back. It's like gawking at an accident on the side of the road. Reading the MySQL articles is a guilty pleasure now.