I sent a $20 donation to Rusty Foster (Kuro5hin.org's founder) with PayPal using the rusty@intes.net address listed in the WHOIS servers as he contact for kuro5hin.org. He has replied to me in email, so I know he received it. (He replied from rusty@kuroshin.org, which I almost used in the first place.)
Here's the message I included along with the money:
I'm very sad to see that "the bastards got you down". Kuro5hin.org was an interesting site that was just starting to take off. I had dozens of stories in my hotlist that I hadn't even had a chance to read yet. I do hope this shutdown is temporary; it was a good site. (I don't suppose you can put it up in a readonly mode for registered users to view old material?)
I understand the frustration of dealing with assholes on a volunteer basis; I don't think anyone can fault you for shutting the site down. Still, I think it provided a valuable service to the community, and I think this situation is quite unfair to you. That's why I decided to send you this unsolicited $20 donation for Kuro5hin.org in appreciation for all your hard work. Whether or not you ever revive Kuro5hin.org, keep the money; you've earned it. (Use it to go see a good movie or something!)
Take a break for a few days or weeks; it sounds like you need it. Then, consider if there's a way to bring it back, in a form less vulnerable to abuse. Perhaps anonymous ID's (with waiting periods before posting) and/or "sponsorship" by existing users might help somewhat; I don't know. Maybe just leaving the site down for a week or two will bore the current attackers into going someplace else.
It sure would be nice to return to the spirit of cooperation that Usenet News had 20 years ago. Unfortunately, it's not clear how that's possible given the rampant wave of immature script kiddies ruining everything they can...
Anyone else care to join me, and show that their all-volunteer efforts really are appreciated?
I just sent a $20 donation to Rusty Foster (Kuro5hin.org's founder) with PayPal using the rusty@intes.net address listed in the WHOIS servers as the contact for kuro5hin.org. (At present, that email address isn't a registered PayPal user, but he's got 20 reasons to claim the money!) Here's the message I included along with the money:
I'm very sad to see that "the bastards got you down". Kuro5hin.org was an interesting site that was just starting to take off. I had dozens of stories in my hotlist that I hadn't even had a chance to read yet. I do hope this shutdown is temporary; it was a good site. (I don't suppose you can put it up in a readonly mode for registered users to view old material?)
I understand the frustration of dealing with assholes on a volunteer basis; I don't think anyone can fault you for shutting the site down. Still, I think it provided a valuable service to the community, and I think this situation is quite unfair to you. That's why I decided to send you this unsolicited $20 donation for Kuro5hin.org in appreciation for all your hard work. Whether or not you ever revive Kuro5hin.org, keep the money; you've earned it. (Use it to go see a good movie or something!)
Take a break for a few days or weeks; it sounds like you need it. Then, consider if there's a way to bring it back, in a form less vulnerable to abuse. Perhaps anonymous ID's (with waiting periods before posting) and/or "sponsorship" by existing users might help somewhat; I don't know. Maybe just leaving the site down for a week or two will bore the current attackers into going someplace else.
It sure would be nice to return to the spirit of cooperation that Usenet News had 20 years ago. Unfortunately, it's not clear how that's possible given the rampant wave of immature script kiddies ruining everything they can...
Anyone else care to join me, and show that their all-volunteer efforts really are appreciated?
I worked at a regional ISP until recently, and we did block bad IP's in the routers, along with source-routed packets. For example, RFC1718 addresses (10.0.0.0/8, 17.16.0.0/12, 198.168.0.0/16) are never routed to/from the Internet, and the IP block we owned would never be accepted as a source address from the Internet. Some ISP's do make the effort. (I'm not sure if downstream customer networks were blocked from spoofing each other's addresses, but I believe they were.)
Now, the question in my mind is whether the effort we made (to secure the networks from spoofing attacks) was typical or atypical of reasonably-sized ISP's? (When I started at this ISP, they had two T1's to one backbone provider; now they have four DS3's to four different backbone providers...)
You know, that's actually not a bad idea. Andover could conceivably pay an actual attorney to review legal issues as they arise, to avoid too many misunderstandings and misinformation from the vast majority of us who need "IANAL" disclaimers...
Would it be worth the cost? I don't know, but it could certainly be a service to the community...
Would be great if VA Linux would invest into Troll Tech to make the same thing happen with QT. This would be another boost to Linux and Free Software & make everyone happy.
Agreed. This is a great trend to see -- Linux companies using their newfound market power to get more software released under the GPL! MandrakeSoft did it with the Bochs PC emulator, now VA Linux with MySQL. (I don't know if Red Hat has done this, but they've funded GNOME development quite a bit.) It's that "rising tide" thing; the more of this we see, the better it is for everyone.
Troll Tech should be next. Seriously, there is a lot of demand for QT despite license headaches; if QT were under the GPL, it would be a Good Thing (tm). Perhaps Red Hat, VA Linux and other Linux vendors could join forces to do more of this, starting with QT. (I might suggest Motif also, but that may not be viable.)
As an aside, could we have a bit less license proliferation? Does every open-source software release really need a custom license with slight variations on existing ones? (I think I'd like to see GPL/MPL dual-licensing become the norm, unless the GPL is modified to be compatible with the MPL...)
Okay, repeat after me. If it isn't on the FTP site under/pub/mozilla/releases, it's not a release yet. Ignore the "M17" in the nightly builds and check the releases for once! Better yet, wait until the release is announced on the mozilla.org website before announcing a new release to give mirror sites a fair chance to get the new release before slashdotting the main server...
There is quite a bit on fine print in the licensing, basically stating that use in any other than a "racreational" (read home) workstation is prohibited under the agreement.
While I haven't read the license in great detail yet, I see nothing in it about "recreational" (or "racreational") use. On the contrary, under the "Grant of Rights" section, part of section 2.1 reads:
Subject to the terms of this Agreement and to third party intellectual property claims, Lucent grants to Licensee, a royalty-free, nonexclusive, non-transferable, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, execute, display, perform, distribute and sublicense, the Original Software (with or without Modifications) in Source Code form and/or Object Code form for commercial and/or non-commercial purposes.
Now, I'm no lawyer, but "for commercial and/or non-commercial purposes" sounds a whole lot different from "recreational use only"...
However... I do notice that the word "perpetual" only exists in the "Modifications" section, and not under "Grant of Rights". Is this an oversight, or should we be alarmed? Is Lucent contemplating revoking the license if they don't like what you do with the code?
Maybe they can still redeem themselves for one of the biggest sins in computer science history. The code is dated but it still exists. Perhaps they can release it for free today?
I just sent Email to James Gosling about this, actually. I don't know if he'll respond, or what he'll think of the idea, but if he wants to see it released, I'm betting he has enough influence within Sun to make it happen. I would love to see the original NeWS code (not just the X11/NeWS merged server) released under a true Open Source license (not SCSL!); NeWS was a really nice system, and I think it still has a place in today's world, but not as a proprietary product.
Back in 1987 when I used NeWS as my primary windowing system (on a diskless Sun 3/50 running SunOS 3.x), I could see how much of a lead X11R3 was already taking over NeWS, despite the obvious superiority of NeWS. It was obvious to me at the time that Sun could beat X11 in the marketplace if they would just release the source. Sadly, Sun continued to live in a world of wishful thinking, believing that they could beat open standards with closed standards entirely under their exclusive control, even when it became obvious that this was a failing strategy. Sun still lives in that dream world today, as evidenced by their SCSL license. Sun doesn't seem to learn well from experience.
But, as you say, Sun could finally redeem themselves for the NeWS fiasco by finally releasing that code, dated though it may be. NeWS will never succeed as a proprietary product; that has been blatently obvious for over a decade. It could succeed as an Open Source project, if Sun can stand to relinquish control for once. They don't have much to lose; NeWS is already a dead product, and represents no value at all for them in its current proprietary state...
This is a very interesting point. Microsoft's lawyer said it was "a statement made under penalty of perjury", and two of the referenced comments listed under "Comments Containing A Copy of the Specification" actually only contains links to unauthorized copies. Given that a single comment was listed under "Comments Containing Links to Internet Sites with Unauthorized Copies of the Specification", Microsoft cannot claim ignorance of the distinction.
It looks like Microsoft's lawyer may have committed perjury.
The copyright issue is bogus. MIT owns all copyrights on Kerberos. Microsoft can't get them by re-writing a spec. Doesn't work that way.
Of course it does. If Microsoft writes a new spec for a Kerberos extension (that's what this was, right?), then Microsoft has a valid copyright on that spec. Accordingly, the single posting that was a verbatim copy of Microsoft's work should really be removed as a blatent copyright violation. (I can't see any way to argue "fair use" for a verbatim copy without additional analysis or discussion by that poster.) Postings which discussed bypassing the EULA or linked to the text should be left intact.
The DMCA is evil and should be repealed, but I believe that posting was already illegal under existing copyright laws before the DMCA was passed. I don't know if Slashdot would have been liable for it, but I can imagine refusing to remove it might qualify them as "accessories after the fact" or some such...
So what it boils down to is, if you open-source the existing version, you cause all the existing inventory at the distributors to have a value of zero; this constitutes damages, and is probably actionable. Expect your pants to be sued off shortly.
They could refund money to the distributors for any returned copies they haven't sold yet. Or they could simply say that the "end of life" for the product is (some deadline) and promise to release the source once that deadline is past. Old products don't have much value anyway...
If nothing else, couldn't the first open-source version be the minimum cleanup necessary from the last proprietary version, not a development version with lots of half-finished features?
And whatever happens, you'd better do a flawless execution of your open source business plan, because the bridge you just rode in on is now merrily in flames.
It's easy to look back on NeWS and only remember the good things about it. I remember the NeWS server crashing all the time because of postscript bugs when some app tried to do tricky things with popup menus.
That's true, but don't you think those bugs would have been fixed years ago if NeWS won in the marketplace instead of X11? (Early versions of X11 weren't bug-free either...)
... which derives from Gres, another academic database...
Ah. That makes the name derivation more obvious. Hadn't heard about that one. What were the differences between Gres and Postgres? (And what kind of name is "Gres" anyway?)
I'm not suggesting it's a conspiracy. My point is that Interbase looks very promising, but the source isn't available yet, so it's misleading to describe it as an "available" open-source alternative. It will be nice to see it released, but until then it's a red herring. (Sure, you can get a binary-only beta, but you can get free binaries of Sybase for Linux too.)
The annoying thing about open-sourcing formerly proprietary products is that nobody ever bothers to release the source for existing releases. It's always a pre-release of the next big release. I understand it's more work, but the people who bought the proprietary releases of the products would probably like to be able to get the source code and improve it without being forced to use the newest release to do so. (This all applies to Netscape as much as Interbase.)
There is a successor to NeWS, and it's called "Java": same PostScript imaging model, same stack oriented architecture, developed by the same person.
Java is hardly a successor to NeWS. Yes, they have some similarities, and both represent attempts to move more application logic into the client machine. However, Java is a programming language, not a windowing system. Java depends on X11, NeWS was a competitor to X11. Calling Java a successor to NeWS is a fairly imaginative stretch.
Its possible that the even the mighty Oracle's developer team doesn't know what everything does.
I've seen Oracle copyright notices going back as far as 1975 or so, which implies that their codebase is 25 years old. Are any of the original Oracle developers still on the team? How many of their current developers have even been there more than 5-10 years?
Couple a large project with even modest turnover, and you're bound to have sections of code that few (if any) current developers are familiar with. It's probably almost unavoidable. Why do you assume that commercial databases don't have the same problem?
At least the PostgreSQL developers admit they didn't fully understand the code they were maintaining until more recently. They say they are familiar with all of the code now. Chances are that puts them ahead of Oracle in that regard, not behind. Keep in mind that PostgreSQL derives from Postgres95, which derives from Postgres, which was an academic research database. That's a long history to catch up on. Give them some credit for managing it at all, and for being honest about their progress...
I used NeWS when it was first released. It was a wonderful windowing system, very flexible and powerful. I saw at the time (1988?) that Sun was making an enormous mistake in withholding the source code to NeWS when X11 was freely available. Couple that with the fact that Sun did a lousy job of supporting their own product (they didn't release applications for NeWS, for example), it's no surprise that X11 clobbered NeWS in the marketplace.
I think I still have my treasured copy of the NeWS reference manual buried in a box someplace. Even now, over a decade later, X11 lacks features NeWS had, as documented by the article referenced from this Slashdot story. NeWS isn't commercially viable and hasn't been for many years; I wonder if Sun could be convinced to release the source code to it and see what could be done with in the Open Source world? (Nah, they'd insist on that abominable SCSL license...)
Berkeley DB: client/server?
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Why Not MySQL?
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· Score: 2
That link has nothing to say about client/server. The real answer is that Berkeley DB doesn't do client/server operations natively because that's at a higher level than Berkeley DB is designed for. It's intended as an embedded database, usage of which is determined by the application it's embedded into. It's not designed as a generic database server.
It's straightforward to make an application that is a TCP/IP server frontend for a Berkeley DB database backend. I've done exactly that, and it works fine. In fact, the code that I wrote for this purpose has been in use at a regional ISP for over 50,000 users to handle authentication information for RADIUS and Email...
Re:How about combining them?
on
Why Not MySQL?
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· Score: 2
So how feasible is it to combine MySQLs SQL parsing and query processing with Berkeley DBs storage layer?
As I mentioned in another posting, I've been wondering this for a while now. You would obviously have to start with the MySQL version that was released under the GPL; I believe that Sleepycat allows free redistribution of the Berkeley DB code if the source code of the application is distributed, as the GPL would require. This may mean that Sleepycat would allow Berkeley DB to be distributed under the GPL? (Might be worth asking them...)
As for how hard it is, I have no idea. I don't know how clean the interface is between the frontend and the backend, or if there's even a clear boundary at all. Berkeley DB has a clean interface, but I don't know if it would be easy to plug it into MySQL.
My mistake; I intended to include a note that free software existed long before RMS made it into a cause. (Much like Open Source software existed long before that name was coined.)
Andover working on MySQL database replication...
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Why Not MySQL?
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· Score: 2
This is very good news, although I didn't see any mention of transactions and journalling in that press release, only database replication. (Of course, to do proper replication, you should have distributed transactions...)
Slashdot Mirror
I sent a $20 donation to Rusty Foster (Kuro5hin.org's founder) with PayPal using the rusty@intes.net address listed in the WHOIS servers as he contact for kuro5hin.org. He has replied to me in email, so I know he received it. (He replied from rusty@kuroshin.org, which I almost used in the first place.)
Here's the message I included along with the money:Anyone else care to join me, and show that their all-volunteer efforts really are appreciated?
Oops. I meant RFC1918, not RFC1718. (Stupid typo.)
By the way, that ISP also blocked outgoing packets (to the Internet) that did not have a source IP address that belonged on its network.
I worked at a regional ISP until recently, and we did block bad IP's in the routers, along with source-routed packets. For example, RFC1718 addresses (10.0.0.0/8, 17.16.0.0/12, 198.168.0.0/16) are never routed to/from the Internet, and the IP block we owned would never be accepted as a source address from the Internet. Some ISP's do make the effort. (I'm not sure if downstream customer networks were blocked from spoofing each other's addresses, but I believe they were.)
Now, the question in my mind is whether the effort we made (to secure the networks from spoofing attacks) was typical or atypical of reasonably-sized ISP's? (When I started at this ISP, they had two T1's to one backbone provider; now they have four DS3's to four different backbone providers...)
I worked for a bank for almost 4 years, and I have news for you: Banks sell your information all the time.
Someone please moderate up the parent post? This is significant, and most people probably don't realize it...
Slashdot should hire us a lawyer.
You know, that's actually not a bad idea. Andover could conceivably pay an actual attorney to review legal issues as they arise, to avoid too many misunderstandings and misinformation from the vast majority of us who need "IANAL" disclaimers...
Would it be worth the cost? I don't know, but it could certainly be a service to the community...
Would be great if VA Linux would invest into Troll Tech to make the same thing happen with QT. This would be another boost to Linux and Free Software & make everyone happy.
Agreed. This is a great trend to see -- Linux companies using their newfound market power to get more software released under the GPL! MandrakeSoft did it with the Bochs PC emulator, now VA Linux with MySQL. (I don't know if Red Hat has done this, but they've funded GNOME development quite a bit.) It's that "rising tide" thing; the more of this we see, the better it is for everyone.
Troll Tech should be next. Seriously, there is a lot of demand for QT despite license headaches; if QT were under the GPL, it would be a Good Thing (tm). Perhaps Red Hat, VA Linux and other Linux vendors could join forces to do more of this, starting with QT. (I might suggest Motif also, but that may not be viable.)
As an aside, could we have a bit less license proliferation? Does every open-source software release really need a custom license with slight variations on existing ones? (I think I'd like to see GPL/MPL dual-licensing become the norm, unless the GPL is modified to be compatible with the MPL...)
Okay, repeat after me. If it isn't on the FTP site under /pub/mozilla/releases, it's not a release yet . Ignore the "M17" in the nightly builds and check the releases for once! Better yet, wait until the release is announced on the mozilla.org website before announcing a new release to give mirror sites a fair chance to get the new release before slashdotting the main server...
For related discussion, see this Kuro5hin story about it...
While I haven't read the license in great detail yet, I see nothing in it about "recreational" (or "racreational") use. On the contrary, under the "Grant of Rights" section, part of section 2.1 reads:Now, I'm no lawyer, but "for commercial and/or non-commercial purposes" sounds a whole lot different from "recreational use only"...
However... I do notice that the word "perpetual" only exists in the "Modifications" section, and not under "Grant of Rights". Is this an oversight, or should we be alarmed? Is Lucent contemplating revoking the license if they don't like what you do with the code?
Maybe they can still redeem themselves for one of the biggest sins in computer science history. The code is dated but it still exists. Perhaps they can release it for free today?
I just sent Email to James Gosling about this, actually. I don't know if he'll respond, or what he'll think of the idea, but if he wants to see it released, I'm betting he has enough influence within Sun to make it happen. I would love to see the original NeWS code (not just the X11/NeWS merged server) released under a true Open Source license (not SCSL!); NeWS was a really nice system, and I think it still has a place in today's world, but not as a proprietary product.
Back in 1987 when I used NeWS as my primary windowing system (on a diskless Sun 3/50 running SunOS 3.x), I could see how much of a lead X11R3 was already taking over NeWS, despite the obvious superiority of NeWS. It was obvious to me at the time that Sun could beat X11 in the marketplace if they would just release the source. Sadly, Sun continued to live in a world of wishful thinking, believing that they could beat open standards with closed standards entirely under their exclusive control, even when it became obvious that this was a failing strategy. Sun still lives in that dream world today, as evidenced by their SCSL license. Sun doesn't seem to learn well from experience.
But, as you say, Sun could finally redeem themselves for the NeWS fiasco by finally releasing that code, dated though it may be. NeWS will never succeed as a proprietary product; that has been blatently obvious for over a decade. It could succeed as an Open Source project, if Sun can stand to relinquish control for once. They don't have much to lose; NeWS is already a dead product, and represents no value at all for them in its current proprietary state...
Maybe we need a petition to free NeWS at last?
This is a very interesting point. Microsoft's lawyer said it was "a statement made under penalty of perjury", and two of the referenced comments listed under "Comments Containing A Copy of the Specification" actually only contains links to unauthorized copies. Given that a single comment was listed under "Comments Containing Links to Internet Sites with Unauthorized Copies of the Specification", Microsoft cannot claim ignorance of the distinction.
It looks like Microsoft's lawyer may have committed perjury.
[I Am Not A Lawyer]
The copyright issue is bogus. MIT owns all copyrights on Kerberos. Microsoft can't get them by re-writing a spec. Doesn't work that way.
Of course it does. If Microsoft writes a new spec for a Kerberos extension (that's what this was, right?), then Microsoft has a valid copyright on that spec. Accordingly, the single posting that was a verbatim copy of Microsoft's work should really be removed as a blatent copyright violation. (I can't see any way to argue "fair use" for a verbatim copy without additional analysis or discussion by that poster.) Postings which discussed bypassing the EULA or linked to the text should be left intact.
The DMCA is evil and should be repealed, but I believe that posting was already illegal under existing copyright laws before the DMCA was passed. I don't know if Slashdot would have been liable for it, but I can imagine refusing to remove it might qualify them as "accessories after the fact" or some such...
So what it boils down to is, if you open-source the existing version, you cause all the existing inventory at the distributors to have a value of zero; this constitutes damages, and is probably actionable. Expect your pants to be sued off shortly.
They could refund money to the distributors for any returned copies they haven't sold yet. Or they could simply say that the "end of life" for the product is (some deadline) and promise to release the source once that deadline is past. Old products don't have much value anyway...
If nothing else, couldn't the first open-source version be the minimum cleanup necessary from the last proprietary version, not a development version with lots of half-finished features?
And whatever happens, you'd better do a flawless execution of your open source business plan, because the bridge you just rode in on is now merrily in flames.
Descriptive analogy. Quite true, of course.
It's easy to look back on NeWS and only remember the good things about it. I remember the NeWS server crashing all the time because of postscript bugs when some app tried to do tricky things with popup menus.
That's true, but don't you think those bugs would have been fixed years ago if NeWS won in the marketplace instead of X11? (Early versions of X11 weren't bug-free either...)
... which derives from Gres, another academic database ...
Ah. That makes the name derivation more obvious. Hadn't heard about that one. What were the differences between Gres and Postgres? (And what kind of name is "Gres" anyway?)
I'm not suggesting it's a conspiracy. My point is that Interbase looks very promising, but the source isn't available yet, so it's misleading to describe it as an "available" open-source alternative. It will be nice to see it released, but until then it's a red herring. (Sure, you can get a binary-only beta, but you can get free binaries of Sybase for Linux too.)
The annoying thing about open-sourcing formerly proprietary products is that nobody ever bothers to release the source for existing releases. It's always a pre-release of the next big release. I understand it's more work, but the people who bought the proprietary releases of the products would probably like to be able to get the source code and improve it without being forced to use the newest release to do so. (This all applies to Netscape as much as Interbase.)
Interbase is open sourced and is available today.
Really? Where is the source? So far, Interbase source has been promised, but to my knowledge, never delivered.
There is a successor to NeWS, and it's called "Java": same PostScript imaging model, same stack oriented architecture, developed by the same person.
Java is hardly a successor to NeWS. Yes, they have some similarities, and both represent attempts to move more application logic into the client machine. However, Java is a programming language, not a windowing system. Java depends on X11, NeWS was a competitor to X11. Calling Java a successor to NeWS is a fairly imaginative stretch.
Its possible that the even the mighty Oracle's developer team doesn't know what everything does.
I've seen Oracle copyright notices going back as far as 1975 or so, which implies that their codebase is 25 years old. Are any of the original Oracle developers still on the team? How many of their current developers have even been there more than 5-10 years?
Couple a large project with even modest turnover, and you're bound to have sections of code that few (if any) current developers are familiar with. It's probably almost unavoidable. Why do you assume that commercial databases don't have the same problem?
At least the PostgreSQL developers admit they didn't fully understand the code they were maintaining until more recently. They say they are familiar with all of the code now. Chances are that puts them ahead of Oracle in that regard, not behind. Keep in mind that PostgreSQL derives from Postgres95, which derives from Postgres, which was an academic research database. That's a long history to catch up on. Give them some credit for managing it at all, and for being honest about their progress...
I used NeWS when it was first released. It was a wonderful windowing system, very flexible and powerful. I saw at the time (1988?) that Sun was making an enormous mistake in withholding the source code to NeWS when X11 was freely available. Couple that with the fact that Sun did a lousy job of supporting their own product (they didn't release applications for NeWS, for example), it's no surprise that X11 clobbered NeWS in the marketplace.
I think I still have my treasured copy of the NeWS reference manual buried in a box someplace. Even now, over a decade later, X11 lacks features NeWS had, as documented by the article referenced from this Slashdot story. NeWS isn't commercially viable and hasn't been for many years; I wonder if Sun could be convinced to release the source code to it and see what could be done with in the Open Source world? (Nah, they'd insist on that abominable SCSL license...)
That link has nothing to say about client/server. The real answer is that Berkeley DB doesn't do client/server operations natively because that's at a higher level than Berkeley DB is designed for. It's intended as an embedded database, usage of which is determined by the application it's embedded into. It's not designed as a generic database server.
It's straightforward to make an application that is a TCP/IP server frontend for a Berkeley DB database backend. I've done exactly that, and it works fine. In fact, the code that I wrote for this purpose has been in use at a regional ISP for over 50,000 users to handle authentication information for RADIUS and Email...
So how feasible is it to combine MySQLs SQL parsing and query processing with Berkeley DBs storage layer?
As I mentioned in another posting, I've been wondering this for a while now. You would obviously have to start with the MySQL version that was released under the GPL; I believe that Sleepycat allows free redistribution of the Berkeley DB code if the source code of the application is distributed, as the GPL would require. This may mean that Sleepycat would allow Berkeley DB to be distributed under the GPL? (Might be worth asking them...)
As for how hard it is, I have no idea. I don't know how clean the interface is between the frontend and the backend, or if there's even a clear boundary at all. Berkeley DB has a clean interface, but I don't know if it would be easy to plug it into MySQL.
Still, it might be worth a try...
My mistake; I intended to include a note that free software existed long before RMS made it into a cause. (Much like Open Source software existed long before that name was coined.)
This is very good news, although I didn't see any mention of transactions and journalling in that press release, only database replication. (Of course, to do proper replication, you should have distributed transactions...)