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MySQL Man Pages Silently Relicensed Away From GPL
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.'"
like oracle but come on Larry no need to be that greedy
Linux modi 2.6.26-2-parisc
They offer things under two licenses: GPL and commercial. IMO, it is far more likely that some build script broke and failed to replace the copyright notice on the GPLed export than that Oracle has decided to try to take the man pages proprietary.... :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
Dontcha mean FirstPostgre?
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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"
Just use Postgres - and get on with whatever it is you have to do :)
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
I think Oracle has been pretty clear the whole way that they are trying to slowly kill off MySQL and drive users towards their more enterprise grade (read: grossly overpriced) product. They've jacked up the license fees substantially a couple times and pretty much every step of the way signaled that they're not really interested in supporting an open source DB, so I'm actually not even sure why this is newsworthy. I actually find a number of features of Oracle's DB offering fairly interesting, but wholly unnecessary for most web applications, so I expect everyone will move on to MariaDB and PostgreSQL. Nice of Oracle to provide a little window for everyone to switch, not that it was their intention.
It is not possible for the copyright holder to commit a license violation.
Let's look at what Oracle is doing. I'll start the list of moves that appear to be intended to alienate the community around the very software they're promoting and cause the Open Source community to create viable forks that end up absconding with the product and its market. You guys contribute additional examples...
IBM isn't known for dumb moves, but partnering with Oracle on this sure is one.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
This is why you shouldn't work on free software that requires you to hand over your copyright. This includes GNU software as well. Of course the FSF would be ideologically opposed to selling their copyrights to a proprietary software company, but what happens if one day donations dry up and they go bankrupt? Then the purchasers of the assets would be perfectly entitled to relicense your code however they want. Even if a bankrupt FSF tried to sell their assets to free-software-friendly companies, the court would probably block that if a proprietary software company made a higher offer. Furthermore, in some jurisdictions, the bankruptcy trustee, administrator, or court can terminate existing licenses—meaning that users couldn't even use an older version of the software, since they would no longer have a license to do so.
But it is possible for the copyright owner to commit a user trust violation by providing new versions of a work only under much harsher terms.
The answer is "Yes" and the long answer is that they already gave the permission or MySQL AB/Sun/Oracle wouldn't have accepted the contribution.
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.
Isn't that simply called a fork?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If outsiders contributed to it they are no longer the sole copyright owners.
---> Joke
o
/|\ <- You
/ \
Whoosh!
On a related note, why does Giorgio Tsoukalos have such wild and crazy hair?!
If you hold the copyright, you can choose to license it however you want. What is untested in court is if a license change can retroactively apply to a fork.
MySQL was always dual licensed, they always required copyright to be assigned to them for contributions so they could monetize it on the side.
They might be held to it under the principle of estoppel. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel in particular, the Overview section, example 2.
However, the code/doc could probably be forked from the prior version. I believe that would be similar to the LibreOffice fork of OpenOffice (nee StarOffice). It's an open question whether that's worth it vs. putting the effort into MariaDB.
Personally, I don't use full featured databases other than the occasional hookup to an sqlite one. However, based on the last description of features, development model/roadmap, licensing, etc. for MariaDB I've read, I'd vote for it.
Perhaps folks that rely on mysql (e.g. the Wordpress community) could weigh in on the technical merits/difficulties of switching.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
It may be that this license change is just a build oops, or it may be that Oracle is breaking it's agreement with the EU to keep mysql stable, supported and free. In any case, this does strengthen the case for MariaDB for those organizations are still on the fence about switching over.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
IMHO, it does seem like stealing from the people that gave their time for free to contribute to the software.
You cannot steal what already belongs to you. Even if it was a gift.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
In general, perhaps.
However, when Oracle took over Sun, it made public statements to the effect that the open version would remain that. If users/consumers took actions [to stay with mysql vs. bolting to Postgres], based on these statements, they may have suffered [actionable] harm.
Reading further down the [wiki] page, under the "reliance-based estoppels" section, Oracle's statements seem to be a "promissory estoppel".
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
You've been kicking this one back and forth for a decade or more! If you knuckleheads would have used BSD licensed PostgreSQL from the git-go instead of MySQL's crazy now-you-see-me-now-you-don't license you would have freed up so much time and intellectual horsepower that you'd have your fucking flying cars by now.
Slashdot. It's like herding cats, except cats are cleaner.
Sorry to be pedantic, but replace "a piece of data" with "a work of authorship". If there isn't the creative work of a human being involved, it's not copyrightable. And then we get to this:
And that means that even when the hand of man is involved, a lot of things are still not copyrightable.
Bruce Perens.
They can waste their mod points all they want they can't show me a SINGLE CASE, not one, where the GPL foundation was able to keep a company from changing the license to their own products. And I never said anything about retroactive, which is why I said you can fork the last GPL version and they can't do shit because if you tried to retroactively change a license you would be laughed out of court.
Kinda fucking sad that only the proprietary guy has actually read the fricking GPL, but show me anywhere where the FSF can control FUTURE licenses because its NOT IN THERE. all the GPL does is makes sure that particular release that was done under GPL then STAYS under GPL, they can change the license at any. time.they.want. and it does not matter because the version that is ALREADY GPL STAYS GPL, which was the whole fucking point, that you wouldn't come to depend on a piece of FOSS and have them pull the rug out from under you by pulling a switch.
But that does NOT give you the right to everything a company makes from that moment on, or even every single version of a particular software that they make because it is THEIR PROPERTY and if they want to make it GPL,MPL, if they want to say you have to do a fricking rain dance to get a copy of the latest version? they can do that. what they CAN'T DO is take what was already GPL and wave a magic wand and make it proprietary, it just does not work that way and no case law that I'm aware of lets a company change a license retroactively from whenever they feel like it. If the court allowed that then there wouldn't be any licenses, because you could never know if the deal you made today would be upheld tomorrow.
So its nothing to get your panties in a twist over guys, you can decide to be a dumbass and trust old Monty again (seriously guys look at the MariaDB license again, old Monty has it set up so all the code belongs to him, no reason he can't sell it out from under you again) or you can go to one of the other SQL variants or hell, if you want you and some other devs can take the last GPL version of MySQL and fork it and make something better. Make it belong to the actual community so it can't be sold and get behind that like you did with Libre office, why not do that? But this is a tempest in a teapot, who cares, you have options galore.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
In theory, I think you are right (IANAL). In practice, however, the mere existence of MariaDB means that it would be close to impossible to prove any actual harm. Oracle can always claim that you are free to switch to MariaDB, and you will have a hard time proving that is difficult to do.
Shachar
(Bloody hell, it appears I've fat-fingered the post button... with no preview, looks like this "tablet" version of /. ain't all it's cracked up to be.)
What you've missed is that MySQL contributors have always been required to assign copyright over, so that the current owner of MySQL is able to retain this control. If you retain copyright over your contributions, yeah, they need your permission to de-GPL the whole shebang, but that doesn't apply here.
I don't think the existence of MariaDB lets Oracle off the hook for a couple of reasons:
MariaDB doesn't change the fact that Oracle is reneging on its [implied] promises.
The harm is real. If a developer/company continues development on mysql (e.g. spends real money) continuing with mysql, based upon the assurances, vs. pulling the plug on all such devel activity immediately [when Oracle first acquired Sun].
In absence of the Oracle roadmap, the other company's choice might have been to spend that [wasted] capital on doing a Postgres port right away. Not only money wasted, but time as well, and business decisions about what markets to stay in/get out of. All of these could affect a company's competitiveness, market share, and profitability. Hence the harm.
If Oracle had said at time of acquisition that mysql was being closed [made no public promises to the contrary], there would be nothing to litigate about. Others are correct about being able to change licensing in general.
But, if Oracle had said that then [people were plenty steamed up], there would have been an immediate code fork [ala LibreOffice] or mass migration to Postgres [IIRC, MariaDB didn't exist then]. So, if Oracle had this latest action in mind all along [after the brouhaha dies down], then they seem truly duplicitous [and vulnerable in a court of law].
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
In practice (and if you're minded to sue), you could actually switch to MariaDB and carefully document the "effort" in terms of costs. Then you have a monetary value.
Now IANAL too, and I don't know the chances of success in court. But if you need a number of dollars, there are ways to get it. It may even be not so small, if you need to do a rollout in a major company.
C - the footgun of programming languages
No point in all these rants. It's indeed just a bug (for now).
(There are plenty of other good reasons to rant at Oracle)