The GPL places requirements when you distribute the code (in this case MySQL or MariaDB) to some other recipient (like a customer). But this isn't the case for a web application, since you just run the code on your own server. In this case you can more or less disregard the GPL completely.
But if you actually sell or give your web application to someone else, then the GPL matters. Now, in this specific case all is still not lost for those who want to stay closed source. For a client-server database like MySQL or MariaDB, your application will only include a small client library that then connects to the database server. It is the license of this library that matters.
So for instance in PHP you already have a library that is under the PHP license, so PHP apps using MySQL don't have GPL anywhere.
For other languages there exist similarly BSD and LGPL licensed client libraries, but they are not yet fully feature complete (we are working on them). Contact me at henrik dot ingo at avoinelama dot fi if you want info on these libraries.
So does that mean that mysql is not open source as per the osi definition clause 1!
The answer to your question is yes, even though it doesn't follow from your parent comment as you may think.
What the parent comment is referring to, is called "dual licensing" and means that MySQL is available with an open source license, but also under a proprietary license, and some customers choose to "voluntarily" buy the proprietary license. The reason typically is that the open source license is GPL and the customer doesn't want to obey the GPL copyleft stipulations. ("voluntary" in citations, because in my years selling MySQL I've never seen a customer who voluntarily gave away money, still, the choice not to be GPL is their choice.) This model is not seen as conflicting with the OSI, since all of the code is available as open source, the customer just doesn't want it.
On the other hand, MySQL also engages in the same practice as SugarCRM, where there is an "Enterprise" version that includes proprietary-only modules. So yes, unfortunately MySQL is not fully open source.
(Disclaimer: I work for MariaDB, a fully open source fork of MySQL.)
The perfect solution would be to just abolish software patents. But as long as that is not happening, at least this is something...
There are 2 things that do try to address that: 1) Some trolls may decide to join the DPL pool, as this would give them access to inventions from the community, which they could use for new patents to extort money from those companies that remain outside the pool. Not all trolls would choose this, but there would be an incentive to do so.
2) It would create more pressure for producing companies to join the DPL pool. In a (rather theoretical) end scenario all practicing companies, IBM and Microsoft included, would have joined the DPL and only trolls would remain outside. In this case there would be no reason to continue with patents anymore, it would be easy to change the law.
In practice, scenario 2 will of course not really happen, just like all software will never be GPL. But it would apply pressure in the right direction: both for more companies to join DPL and for opinion to turn against patents.
(I'm Henrik Ingo, cited as having given Florian this idea, I got it partially from LWN myself.)
You could easily verify from Brian's blog that he nowadays works for nobody, having left Sun some days ago. He works on Drizzle, Monty works on MariaDB, different open source projects.
Monty is spending his time and significant share of money to work on an important GPL licensed piece of software and you're telling him to work on something else?
Brian is speaking up on something that for many years troubled him at MySQL AB. Last time I met you you yourself said that in your opinion MySQL AB FUDded the GPL. Now you attack Brian because of whom you (wrongly!) think he works for, even if what he's saying is something you (used to?) agree with. Is the truth dependent on who is speaking it?
What happened? Where is the real Bruce? Did your account get cracked?
Actually, the Europarl is big and there have been people who understand SW patents and copyrights very well, for instance in the Greens and even in the conservative bloc. It's just that for every such MEP there were also those with their hands deep in the RIAA/BSA lobbyists pockets. To have a new party running primarily on this theme will indeed make a difference.
You could see it on Swedish pre-election TV debates already. The PP wasn't even there (as a non-established party, this is normal) but the established ones (Greens and Left) would argue for essenitally the PP agenda, with the others grudgingly admitting to small pieces.
In fact, MySQL is by far the most popular database for web hosting environments, where anyone with a credit card can get access to a shared database, create and drop tables and run most SQL commands they want to. This should be a testament to its security if anything, btw.
*But*, shared web hosting never use master-slave replication. Anyone that would use master-slave would be running their own application on dedicated servers. This would also be a logical reason why the bug is not critical, in real life it is not a threat.
(I of course agree that all software should be bug free. I just wanted to say there is a logic to why certain bugs have less priority than others.)
The MSN story is really weird, they don't even know what to call the EU commission! Reminds me of some localized versions of MS software:-) Funny.
Other than that, congrats and a big thanks to FFII and all who did great work with the parliament. Where it not for the Commision and the Council, I would regain my belief in democracy.
We should remember that when you read all the "we might Open Source Solaris" articles we've seen, what they are talking about has nothing to do with Open Source as we know it. At best it is some kind of Microsoft Shared Source scenario, but probably it's just smoke and mirrors. Remember, Suns major partners this year have been SCO and Microsoft.
So when they now say they might "Open Source" Java, I don't see any reason for ESR or RMS (or anyone else for that matter) to get excited.
Hey, this could be a great tool for converting Linux users to WinXP!! Now they can try Windows without installing it and when they start to like it, they can switch to a WinXP installed on the harddrive.
This Live-Windows-CD is also great, if you need to use Windows but all your friends have Linux and in your office there is only Linux etcetc... Don't worry, now you can keep this CD in your pocket, and use Windows on any computer!
While it's not news that MS doesn't see that there might be any security threats towards Windows, should we read more into this:
"One main risk in having source code exposed to the public is the possibility that hackers could break into computers running Windows NT or Windows 2000 and destroy or steal data.
"Although the company said that was unlikely, given the relatively small portion of code that had been circulating, a greater risk could come from others using the code as a base for developing software that competes with Windows."
The intro is incorrect. Mandrake already had a very profitable quarter in 1999, which BTW was rather unusual for a Linux distro at the time. Then came the venture capitalists, and that was the end of profitability.
Besides, if you want the cd to be DRM'd would it not make more sense to actually encrypt the contents rather than to have a software driver encrypt them on the fly? Who thought that was a good idea?
The problem with DRM is, you are trying to encrypt/protect your data from it's reciepient. If you succeed, your customer won't be able to listen to the CD. If you let them listen to it, they can copy it. (What's the difference with a microphone and an ear??)
This is why all DRM schemes end up like these hilarius comedies. It's logically impossible to accomplish.
Of course, legislation like the DMCA only make things better. For instance the EUCD forbids circumvention of 'effective copy-rotection'. They then need to have an additional explanation that basically says: "Also ineffective copy-protection mechanisms are effective when you interpret this directive".
So basically, if yo claim something is protected (when it's not, and if I was correct above, then nothing is) then it's illegal to copy it, because if you succeed in copying it, then you must have broken the protection.
Those of you that are interested in facts rather than ranting can compare the above with the FFII tabular of the amendments: http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/plen0 309/vote/ffiivotlst.en.pdf or http://swpat.ffii. org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/plen0 309/
Not really. They will reject the mail before it is being sent in the first place. (Whereafter your SMTP will be responsible for returning the non-existant domain message.)
In fact, the "lee-nuchs" pronounciation is Swedish, which is Linus' native tongue. In Finnish the pronounciation is shorter, think "pin-ups".
Finnish as a written language is pretty young, only a couple of hundred years. Therefore it has the convenient property of words being written exactly as spoken (or vice versa, depends on how you look at it), because the guy who invented it was smart enough to do it like that. Of course the names/sounds of the letters in the alphabet are not all the same as in English, so I guess it's weird to you folks anyway. But once you know the letters, you can count on a letter always being pronounced the same way, no matter what word it is in.
Slashdot Mirror
This is another question with 2 answers :-)
The GPL places requirements when you distribute the code (in this case MySQL or MariaDB) to some other recipient (like a customer). But this isn't the case for a web application, since you just run the code on your own server. In this case you can more or less disregard the GPL completely.
But if you actually sell or give your web application to someone else, then the GPL matters. Now, in this specific case all is still not lost for those who want to stay closed source. For a client-server database like MySQL or MariaDB, your application will only include a small client library that then connects to the database server. It is the license of this library that matters.
So for instance in PHP you already have a library that is under the PHP license, so PHP apps using MySQL don't have GPL anywhere.
For other languages there exist similarly BSD and LGPL licensed client libraries, but they are not yet fully feature complete (we are working on them). Contact me at henrik dot ingo at avoinelama dot fi if you want info on these libraries.
So does that mean that mysql is not open source as per the osi definition clause 1!
The answer to your question is yes, even though it doesn't follow from your parent comment as you may think.
What the parent comment is referring to, is called "dual licensing" and means that MySQL is available with an open source license, but also under a proprietary license, and some customers choose to "voluntarily" buy the proprietary license. The reason typically is that the open source license is GPL and the customer doesn't want to obey the GPL copyleft stipulations. ("voluntary" in citations, because in my years selling MySQL I've never seen a customer who voluntarily gave away money, still, the choice not to be GPL is their choice.) This model is not seen as conflicting with the OSI, since all of the code is available as open source, the customer just doesn't want it.
On the other hand, MySQL also engages in the same practice as SugarCRM, where there is an "Enterprise" version that includes proprietary-only modules. So yes, unfortunately MySQL is not fully open source.
(Disclaimer: I work for MariaDB, a fully open source fork of MySQL.)
Yes. Kind of.
The perfect solution would be to just abolish software patents. But as long as that is not happening, at least this is something...
There are 2 things that do try to address that:
1) Some trolls may decide to join the DPL pool, as this would give them access to inventions from the community, which they could use for new patents to extort money from those companies that remain outside the pool. Not all trolls would choose this, but there would be an incentive to do so.
2) It would create more pressure for producing companies to join the DPL pool. In a (rather theoretical) end scenario all practicing companies, IBM and Microsoft included, would have joined the DPL and only trolls would remain outside. In this case there would be no reason to continue with patents anymore, it would be easy to change the law.
In practice, scenario 2 will of course not really happen, just like all software will never be GPL. But it would apply pressure in the right direction: both for more companies to join DPL and for opinion to turn against patents.
(I'm Henrik Ingo, cited as having given Florian this idea, I got it partially from LWN myself.)
Uh oh, Bruce, are you having a bad day?
You could easily verify from Brian's blog that he nowadays works for nobody, having left Sun some days ago. He works on Drizzle, Monty works on MariaDB, different open source projects.
Monty is spending his time and significant share of money to work on an important GPL licensed piece of software and you're telling him to work on something else?
Brian is speaking up on something that for many years troubled him at MySQL AB. Last time I met you you yourself said that in your opinion MySQL AB FUDded the GPL. Now you attack Brian because of whom you (wrongly!) think he works for, even if what he's saying is something you (used to?) agree with. Is the truth dependent on who is speaking it?
What happened? Where is the real Bruce? Did your account get cracked?
Actually, the Europarl is big and there have been people who understand SW patents and copyrights very well, for instance in the Greens and even in the conservative bloc. It's just that for every such MEP there were also those with their hands deep in the RIAA/BSA lobbyists pockets. To have a new party running primarily on this theme will indeed make a difference.
You could see it on Swedish pre-election TV debates already. The PP wasn't even there (as a non-established party, this is normal) but the established ones (Greens and Left) would argue for essenitally the PP agenda, with the others grudgingly admitting to small pieces.
In fact, MySQL is by far the most popular database for web hosting environments, where anyone with a credit card can get access to a shared database, create and drop tables and run most SQL commands they want to. This should be a testament to its security if anything, btw.
*But*, shared web hosting never use master-slave replication. Anyone that would use master-slave would be running their own application on dedicated servers. This would also be a logical reason why the bug is not critical, in real life it is not a threat.
(I of course agree that all software should be bug free. I just wanted to say there is a logic to why certain bugs have less priority than others.)
The MSN story is really weird, they don't even know what to call the EU commission! Reminds me of some localized versions of MS software :-) Funny.
Other than that, congrats and a big thanks to FFII and all who did great work with the parliament. Where it not for the Commision and the Council, I would regain my belief in democracy.
We should remember that when you read all the "we might Open Source Solaris" articles we've seen, what they are talking about has nothing to do with Open Source as we know it. At best it is some kind of Microsoft Shared Source scenario, but probably it's just smoke and mirrors. Remember, Suns major partners this year have been SCO and Microsoft.
So when they now say they might "Open Source" Java, I don't see any reason for ESR or RMS (or anyone else for that matter) to get excited.
Hey, this could be a great tool for converting Linux users to WinXP!! Now they can try Windows without installing it and when they start to like it, they can switch to a WinXP installed on the harddrive.
This Live-Windows-CD is also great, if you need to use Windows but all your friends have Linux and in your office there is only Linux etcetc... Don't worry, now you can keep this CD in your pocket, and use Windows on any computer!
Oh wait... did I just get something backwards?
While it's not news that MS doesn't see that there might be any security threats towards Windows, should we read more into this:
e ch nologyNews&storyID=4351461
"One main risk in having source code exposed to the public is the possibility that hackers could break into computers running Windows NT or Windows 2000 and destroy or steal data.
"Although the company said that was unlikely, given the relatively small portion of code that had been circulating, a greater risk could come from others using the code as a base for developing software that competes with Windows."
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=t
The intro is incorrect. Mandrake already had a very profitable quarter in 1999, which BTW was rather unusual for a Linux distro at the time. Then came the venture capitalists, and that was the end of profitability.
henrik
... it stands for RPM: Package Manager (http://lwn.net/Articles/49665/)
(And who said "revisionist history"?)
henrik
Besides, if you want the cd to be DRM'd would it not make more sense to actually encrypt the contents rather than to have a software driver encrypt them on the fly? Who thought that was a good idea?
The problem with DRM is, you are trying to encrypt/protect your data from it's reciepient. If you succeed, your customer won't be able to listen to the CD. If you let them listen to it, they can copy it. (What's the difference with a microphone and an ear??)
This is why all DRM schemes end up like these hilarius comedies. It's logically impossible to accomplish.
Of course, legislation like the DMCA only make things better. For instance the EUCD forbids circumvention of 'effective copy-rotection'. They then need to have an additional explanation that basically says: "Also ineffective copy-protection mechanisms are effective when you interpret this directive".
So basically, if yo claim something is protected (when it's not, and if I was correct above, then nothing is) then it's illegal to copy it, because if you succeed in copying it, then you must have broken the protection.
henrik
Those of you that are interested in facts rather than ranting can compare the above with the FFII tabular of the amendments: http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/plen0 309/vote/ffiivotlst.en.pdf. org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/plen0 309/
or
http://swpat.ffii
Not really. They will reject the mail before it is being sent in the first place. (Whereafter your SMTP will be responsible for returning the non-existant domain message.)
In fact, the "lee-nuchs" pronounciation is Swedish, which is Linus' native tongue. In Finnish the pronounciation is shorter, think "pin-ups".
Finnish as a written language is pretty young, only a couple of hundred years. Therefore it has the convenient property of words being written exactly as spoken (or vice versa, depends on how you look at it), because the guy who invented it was smart enough to do it like that. Of course the names/sounds of the letters in the alphabet are not all the same as in English, so I guess it's weird to you folks anyway. But once you know the letters, you can count on a letter always being pronounced the same way, no matter what word it is in.
Henrik, bi-lingual like Linus