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MySQL Man Pages Silently Relicensed Away From GPL

Posted by Soulskill on from the gimme-it!-it's-mine! dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The MariaDB blog is reporting a small change to the license covering the man pages to MySQL. Until recently, the governing license was GPLv2. Now the license reads, 'This software and related documentation are provided under a license agreement containing restrictions on use and disclosure and are protected by intellectual property laws. Except as expressly permitted in your license agreement or allowed by law, you may not use, copy, reproduce, translate, broadcast, modify, license, transmit, distribute, exhibit, perform, publish, or display any part, in any form, or by any means. Reverse engineering, disassembly, or decompilation of this software, unless required by law for interoperability, is prohibited.'"

8 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. This affects distributions by Cassini2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most distributions include the documentation with any software packages distributed. Without a GPL or free software license on the documentation, the distributions must either:
    (a) comply with the license,
    (b) provide a third-party download (like Adobe with Flash), or
    (c) stop including MySQL.
    Given the existence of MariaDB, it might be simplest to stop including MySQL in the distribution.

  2. Re:good by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Informative

    Software is. This manpage change appears to be implying that the corresponding software is covered by some license other than some variant of the GPL as the given restrictions are incompatible with that license.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  3. Re:Is this legal? by Hewligan · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, MySQL has always required copyright assignment for stuff to be included.

    --

    "If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated"

  4. Just use Postgres by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just use Postgres - and get on with whatever it is you have to do :)

  5. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    How so? If they own the copyright, they are free to relicense a piece of data (and more importantly any new versions of it) under any terms they wish.
    This doesn't change the fact that the copy you downloaded previously under the GPL stays that way, and you can redistribute it indefinitely.

    captcha: darlings

  6. Assigned by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can't steal my copyright or that of my friends who wrote them.

    Ellison can't steal it, but if this comment is to be trusted, you already signed it away.

  7. Re:good by eht · · Score: 4, Informative

    MySQL was always dual licensed, they always required copyright to be assigned to them for contributions so they could monetize it on the side.

  8. Re:Sounds like a mistake. by nryeng · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're right. This is an unintentional change that will be reversed. http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512