Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
---> Joke
o
/|\ <- You
/ \
Whoosh!
On a related note, why does Giorgio Tsoukalos have such wild and crazy hair?!
MySQL was always dual licensed, they always required copyright to be assigned to them for contributions so they could monetize it on the side.
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.
Glad I moved to PostgreSQL.
(Nothing to do with Oracle screwing it up - I moved back around the 6.4 relase. IMHO Postgres was always better on Linux/Unix, and MySQL's popularity is really only due to it having a Windows installer first.)
That's not at all why MySQL was popular. It was dead simple to get started on, you could dump/reload databases to text files trivially, and you could learn on a platform with minimal support for everything so there wasn't a stack of binders work of documentation. It was fast, free, had minimal complexity for a DB, and had a clear path from first tutorial to production.
E pluribus unum
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.
Your memory of IBM differs from my own.
Kid-proof tablet..