I think the problem is that he would have to fork from the GPL'd version, which means he can't sell a proprietary fork.
(Someone please correct me as I am most probably wrong)
(Someone please correct me as I am most probably wrong)
It doesn't have a linking exception like Linux does [which allows you to write non-GPL programs to run on it].
Basically, the dude used pure GPL [a bad idea in my book] with no linking exceptions. He did this to make $$$$ off of the dual licensing scam that MySql AB [The company] was doing. He then sold the company, and got bit in the ass, because you can't make a useful fork of the application due to the overly restrictive license [which pure GPL is for a library, such as MySQL].
Basically, if you wrote a proprietary app that uses MySQL, you're hosed if regulators don't block this.
Now the C-library is a different story. If you want to use it, then you're looking either GPL or one of their supported FOSS licenses. So, it isn't quite as bad as you're making it sound.
What really needs to happen is to have someone write an LGPL or BSD MySQL client library. That would pretty much put up a licensing firewall. This might even be the case with something like DBSlayer. It would be even more clear if the middleware supported multiple DB backends.
MySQL has always straddled this GPL/FOSS/proprietary fence, and never made it very clear if you really needed a commercial license. I could be 'misremembering', but I thought that at one time they even explicitly said that if you used Python/Perl/PHP/etc you could write proprietary software w/o a commercial license. However, they also said that if your program "required MySQL features" that you had to have a commercial license. They made all of their money off of this confusion. But I think that if a third-party BSD client library spoke the correct binary protocol to the server, that you'd be in the clear. Then again, I'm not a lawyer...
FWIW, a variant of the same business model was used by Sleepycat Software for the BerkeleyDB family of products -- which have continued to be supported and improved and sold since Oracle acquired them.
GPL is fine for libraries, if it has exceptions for building on top of it (but if has that, why aren't you using LGPL...), but without that, only other open source projects can really use it, and few of them at that will use the code.
Public domain, BSD, MIT, Apache etc are much more useful and free for the purposes of 99% of the world for libraries.
MySQL AB did not explicitly set out REAL exemptions to make lots of development legal, however they were wink wink nod nod allowing all sorts of things, so now the developers who built on it are likely screwed, as they need to have oracle issue the same sort of wink wink nod nod statements themselves, or explicitly relicense the whole thing.
MySQL is the HUGE competitor for Oracle's main product on the medium sized deployment target. I for one hope the regulators don't approve if Oracle isn't forced to change the licensing to more link Linux (link exception) or to a more permissive license (Apache/MIT/BSD), like the de facto licensing regime was.
>. It's just that since it was an allowable strategy for MySQL AB, it should be allowable for Oracle Corporation, too
I thought it shady as hell back when MySQL AB was independent too, but the issue is that Oracle puts out a competing product. By buying MySQL, they basically acquire their main competitor and have power to jack up the prices everyone pays for DB software in the simple case, or guide the MySQL product to areas to make it less competitive with Oracle in the more subtle case (thereby making the public less well served).
That's my understanding too. Maybe he could fork MySQL, and create some tools roun it that also work for other SQLs (Postgres, SQLite, MS-SQL, etc). He could use the dual-licensing approach for these tools (since they are not tied to MySQL)