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Monty Wants To Save MySQL
An anonymous reader writes "It seems as if the MySQL author is trying hard to win back control over MySQL. In his blog he calls upon the MySQL users to 'Help keep the Internet free' by signing his petition. He fears that if Oracle buys Sun they automatically get MySQL which would spell doom for the project. But I have have mixed feelings with this call for help, because after all — who sold MySQL in the first place?"
we still have pgsql, right? yeah, migration, but still free/libre, right? first post? nah...
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
Will this show up every 2 weeks on /.
Maybe he shouldn't had sold it in the first time, so he wouldn't be crying it back now?
It's like you broke up with your girlfriend and then go crying her back when she has found a new guy, while you're having no luck.
I, too, would love to sell something for a billion dollars and then have it given back.
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He got paid a large amount of money for MySQL, and now he's not satisfied. MySQL is under GPL v. 2, so there isn't a problem. If Sun takes it in a bad direction, it can be forked.
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Hypocrite Monty.
Give back the billion dollars and we may talk.
If you had never sold MySQL to Sun in the first place, it wouldn't be in the position it is now in. I hope the money was worth it.
Why are you so concerned now? Your chance to do something came and went, and so did you.
Also, I rather think you overrate MySQL in that petition post, but thats just mho.
It's called PostgreSQL. It's fast, what's even more important, it's correct and it's tried and tested. Get it here.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
He wants to build another business on MySQL and force Oracle into letting him do it.
This is greed masquerading as virtue.
"In January, 2008, Sun legally acquired MySQL for $1 billion."
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Since InnoDB (the only proper storage engine in the default MySQL distribution) is owned by Oracle already, why bother?
Folks, I read the petition before commenting. There are options on what to do, and one of them is to release it to an independent entity "MySQL must be divested to a suitable third party that can continue to develop it under the GPL." That certainly doesn't have to be him. It does provide a very effective low cost alternative and I can't see Oracle putting a lot of effort into a competing product.
If he'd wanted to retain control then why did he sell mySQL to Sun? Once that sale was completed he gave up his rights and claims. He certainly didn't have a problem with a corporation owning it in exchange for a cool billion earlier.
What Sun said they wanted to do with it is immaterial; Monty's rights to do anything more than complain vocally were terminated by his own hand the instant he signed the contract, and were made irreversible when he deposited that check.
The fact of the matter is that Oracle doesn't give more than about a shit-and-a-half about mySQL. Oracle cares about Enterprise installations and mySQL not only ain't there now, it never will be. Even Foxbase^W^H MS SQL Server spanks it 37 ways to next Tuesday in Enterprise and Data Warehousing environments.
Meanwhile, if mySQL really is and has remained open source, then it's still open, so Monty should STFU and fork it already. If not, then he himself killed it and there's no one else to blame.
Once you sell your 2CV to someone, you have no more say in what's done with the car, even if it turns out to have been bought by Top Gear and they want to blow it up. Once you take the money, you don't get to complain anymore. If it had meant that much to Monty then why did he sell?
Cake: have vs. eat.
The comment moderation on his blog is just icing on that cake -- only comments supporting poor, ickle widdle Monty's untenable position are allowed through.
And for those who still refuse to change the "evil Oracle" record, The base Oracle DB charge is $350 (Std) / $950 (Ent) per user or $17,500 (Std) / $47,500 (Ent) per processor -- annually, not including required support and other charges -- Oracle doesn't give a shit about mySQL and the paltry few thousand that supporting it might bring in.
If it's really still Open Sauce and the community doesn't like what happens with it then mySQL will fork. Again. Except that it will need a new core team since the current core team has bills to pay and enjoys employment during an economic mess.
So MySQL sold for a cool $1 billion in whatever it was, and now he wants to get it back for free? This is so funny it may just work.
There is a third problem. No one is going to risk their business on Monty's fork or sign over their patches because the risk is so great that he will sell every one out again. The fact that he is fully in bed with Microsoft on this makes it even more likely. Fool us once shame on you, fool us twice shame on us.
You know, sadly, nobody is going to get that, right?
The Flash plugin does not merely use dynamic linking to create a derivative work of Firefox. It uses a published API for the express purpose of making such plugins, with permission granted by the original author of that API - Mosaic Communications Company.
So, Monty uses dual licensing to turn his open source software into a profitable company, sells that company for a billion dollars, and now he's suddenly concerned with freedom. Oracle buying MySQL may be bad, but I don't think Monty has much credibility in opposing it.
Sooo, To understand the basics here...
/. entry, and even the glorious Number 2 (southpark reference) has problems with his logic on property rights (when it suits his coffers).
... Now, keep sending those letters.
Monty wants to keep the internet free, and that is somehow connected to his old, crappy product being "freed" from the rightful owner. Uhuh, riiiiight.
I read the tripe of a blog-entry, and I am disgusted. This man seems to write as bad as he codes. Aside from quite healthy competition, PostgreSQL comes to mind. Especially the feature of stored procedures (don't bitch, I am sure they included that after Monty sold it.)
First and foremost, I need to point out the painfully obvious:
The Infrastructure of the Internet is NOT free. The pipes are owned by companies, and they can rightfully charge for the usage. No second-rate celebunerd can change that. You have to be be BONO to be recognized beyond a casual
To add to that, Oracle, in all their evil splendor, has the complete right, if it owns SUN, to modify, improve, abolish any and all property that came with the purchase. Who knows, maybe they will turn MySQL into something usable by serious programmers! Oh, wait, they HAVE a product, closed source, that has been established to work for decades, and that profitable companies pay good money for when it comes to managing data... I am shocked and awed!
I know this is a very difficult thing to understand for you young freetards out there: Stuff costs money. Things and services. Like iPods, cleaning cars, using the turnpike, going to the pool, beer, hookers, and other fun stuff.
And again, why is there no concerted effort to produce a GOOD product? MySQL can go away tomorrow and no one will give a flying rat's ass. Your SQL statements will still work, and all those young PHP coders will flock to competitors that suits their freetard mentality.
Maybe someone can explain to me that whole FREE mentality. Somehow, everything has to be free if you WANT it. And then what? The pattern keeps emerging that those pining for the FREE fjords fail to differentiate other people's work from theirs. Others should provide free tools, free software, free this free that. But somehow, they want to charge for the result of using said tools.
That, Gentlemen (and those high regarded few Ladies), is the problem here.
I call Monty in reference to a Family Guy episode: HE IS A BIG FAT PHONY
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Monty is an insignificant buzzing gnat and couldn't delay things by an hour. It's SAP that gets to gum up the works. Heck IBM is probably in on the fun too.
I'm sorry, but Monty sold his baby, and got well paid for it. If I could sell any program I wrote for a fraction of what he sold MySQL for, and they kicked me out of working on it, I could do any number of any other things I wanted to work on in life. Come on Monty, attack P=NP. It's not like you need a job.
This is my sig.
It may not be as fast as MySQL, but it's certainly more robust and capable. If you look at the core of ORACLE's design (which is pretty damned good), you'll find that Postgresql has similar design principals.
When it comes to data loss, I'd rather the more robust database than the fastest one.
*** Don't be dull.***
Killing MySQL is not what we should be concerned about. Oracle taking control of MySQL's direction is a far greater danger. It will be harder to build a new community around a fork if MySQL still exists. If Oracle kills MySQL, a new fork will appear overnight and people will flock to it. If they keep MySQL around and do everything in their power to control it, Oracle can virtually ensure that MySQL never becomes a real threat to its proprietary database. My guess is that Oracle will keep MySQL but they will position it as a lightweight database server for small to mid-size databases. They'll push people toward their proprietary database for a "REAL" enterprise database.
If you look a little closer at his words, you'll see that he's really saying MySQL can't succeed commercially as open source. This is, of course, true: a product that isn't commercially maintained can't be a commercial success. Fortunately, it doesn't need to be a commercial success in order to succeed.
You still haven't explained how a derivative work is created. You make an appeal to authority where you have none, period. (See, wasn't that easy?)
Copyright law governs the distribution of copies of a protected work. That's all. It doesn't govern use (although, sometimes, contracts are used as part of the licensing agreement to receive a copy for proprietary software, which can add further restrictions). But the GPL is not a contract, it is a license, and only covers the work it was applied to, and any *derivative works*.
The thing is, even though the linked library or EXE uses the API, it doesn't *contain* the API. So, the argument can be made that where there is no copying, there is no copyright violation. Put another way, there is a very logical argument that a dynamically linked work is completely separate from the executable or library it links against. Think of a book or magazine article, or even an article on a website, which directs the reader to go read something else, then come back and finish reading the text of the article. Is the article a derivative work of the work it references/links to?
Hence, even though the library or exe *depends* upon the other work, it may not be a derivative because it does not *contain* the other work (or, perhaps the courts will decide that it *is* in fact, a derivative, but no one really knows for sure). See, like I said, we can argue about this all day, but the question is still not settled in law. The law, so far as I know, *does not* address the question of dynamically linking computer programs in any statute or court precedent.
"Your argument is like saying oral sex is not sex."
No, it's not. It's nice you're so opinionated, but that makes no sense.
It's more like saying "Oral sex can't get you pregnant".
If you're a GPL fundamentalist you get what you deserve: you get to run a GPL MySQL version.