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Help save MySQL

monty-says.blogspot.com

76 pointsbytebot57 comments

Groklaw, a well-respected blog that deals with open source legal issues, seems to have a different take on it, namely that Widenius, as operator of a competing database company based on a fork of MySQL, pretty much just wants to strip the GPL from MySQL so that he and others can develop completely closed-source databases based on it.

Article: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091208104422384

His blog post sounds all pro-open-source until you get down to the suggestions, where it several times references forcing Oracle to relicense more permissively (removing restrictions against closed-source derivatives) while also denying Oracle the right to make closed-source modules. It sounds like the guy sold MySQL for a billion dollars, and now wants to be handed the rights to use the code in a closed source program while denying Oracle (who paid for Sun who paid for MySQL) the ability to do the same.

> pretty much just wants to strip the GPL from MySQL so that he and others can develop completely closed-source databases based on it.

So what's the problem with that?

Legally nothing. But he used to have to right to do that (the MySql dual licence), but he sold it for a large amount of money to Sun. Now he's arguing that if Oracle buys Sun they should give away for free that same right he sold.

If he truly believed that it should be free, he could have made it free when he owned it. He wants the benefit of selling it (money) and the benefits of not selling it (ownership) at the same time. He's trying to use the open source community for his own commercial self-interest.

That's why people are finding it objectionable.

>> pretty much just wants to strip the GPL from MySQL so that he and others can develop completely closed-source databases based on it. > So what's the problem with that?

Nothing. It's just that he sold the right to do that to Sun for a billion dollars, and now wants the EU to give it back to him for free. If he wanted to build a closed source DB off of MySQL code, he should have done so when he owned the source.

The Cynic: he certainly wasn't raising this big a stink when he was selling Mysql off to Sun for a great deal of money.

I felt irritated enough about this to write about it:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/12/13/mysql-oracle-and-the-e...

Extremely clear, thought out, and well written.

Good job sir.

You know, I never really understood the fuss because well you can just fork the freaking thing. But what you cover in your analysis that you link to, I never though of it that way. It is kind of "Pricky" to sell the thing no conditions to Sun and then when you are not a party to the secondary transaction, do a bunch of hand-waving.

Very good, really. I am tweeting a link to it right now.

Another contrarian view: if Oracle does do to MySQL what Monty warns about this may accelerate interest in GPLed forks, e.g. Drizzle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drizzle_%28database_server%29

And just to make that even more obvious, that would be a good thing.

The difference, and he spells it out quite clearly, is that Oracle already has a database and that it wants to sell its database and that MySQL interferes with that.

But as soon as you've sold something, isn't it up to the new owner to decide what to do with whatever it is you've sold?

Legally, yeah. But many startup founders consider carefully what the new owner is going to do with their creation before selling it. That's the responsible thing to do, because there're users who don't have a legal say in the transaction, but will often be impacted quite severely if the new owner buys a product to kill it.

Look at the outcry when the Etherpads sold their company to Google so it could be killed, for example.

Selling to Sun would not seem to me to be a move directed by such careful consideration.

Hindsight is 20-20, of course, but still - I don't remember thinking of it as a good move for the future of MySQL at the time.

And thus creating a monopoly in the database market? No. There is plenty of competition, both open source and proprietary.

Of course there is. But Oracle may feel it makes no sense to compete against itself.

Their money, their call is how I see it, as long as they aren't removing the only competitor from the market.

I honestly don't understand the problem; below I'll present the situation as I see it, please correct me if I am wrong.

The argument is this: 1. MySQL is an open source project. 2. Oracle is going to control MySQL. 3. Oracle will try to kill MySQL.

If that happens, why won't a new organization spring up and fork MySQL (perhaps NewMySQL) and continue to actively maintain it?

To try and use the law to stop this from happening is hardly something I could support. Once you sell your company you no longer have control of it, you cannot receive the benefits of the sale and then try to force the government to prevent them from doing something you do not agree with.

This is the answer: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/10/importance-of-license...

Basically organizations that are putting money and work on MySQL absolutely require to get licenses, or in other words, the GPL is not good for this guys because they have to do their stuff with parts of closed source software and so forth.

The problem is the GPL clearly: it allows you to earn money selling licenses, but I don't like the model:

1. You start a GPLed open source project.

2. Then start to sell licenses to make the software like if it was BSD only for paying customers: PROFIT

3. The you get in troubles... like MySQL.

4. You ask for help to the community...

Edit: I'm claiming the GPL is always a bad idea, but it depends on the kind of project. For instance it worked very well for Linux, but does not work so well in other contexts when it's highly likely that companies require to use the code in ways not allowed by the GPL for legitimate business needs (that is, not just to create a closed source version of the project).

It looks like they should have released it with an MIT or BSD license.

I guess they could always take the Billion dollars they received for it, and create a new database company and completely rewrite a new database engine. Or use that money to fund an organization to maintain development.

If they had, they would have competition from day one. MySQL enjoyed the monopoly of selling proprietary licenses to their clients.

So much, in fact, Monty still wants it after having sold the company for an obscene amount of money.

If there is so much concern about MySQL's future perhaps he should have considered that before selling MySQL to Sun in the first place.

To get it into the enterprise, I guess.

Indeed, and wasn't he running a very healthy business anyway? It's a shame.

No, I will not write a politician to get him to "save" your business.

This is exactly like bankers getting rich from risky investments, then turning to the government for a bailout once the going gets tough.

I think I'll just stick with PostgreSQL, and save myself from all of this political BS.

Not to mention nice add-ons like PostGIS. MySQL is simpler to set up in master-slave configurations, but except for that, PostgreSQL is almost always my choice.

Yes, PostGIS is awesome. I have run into some issues with multi-master replication, I was quiet surprised when I saw how easy it was on MySQL.

Since the overall reaction to this seems pretty negative, a moment of "devil's advocate":

Yes, he sold MySQL--to Sun, not Oracle. I imagine he expected that Sun would continue MySQL's business model. He got lots of money, Sun got a new revenue stream, the customers kept doing what they had been doing, everyone was happy.

Call him naive for assuming things wouldn't change, but it's not like he knowingly sold MySQL to a company that wouldn't necessarily be interested in preserving the existing MySQL user community. Bashing him for only raising the issue now may be a bit unfair.

That said, I'm not particularly sympathetic either.

It wouldn't be the first time a company acquired another to kill competition. That doesn't automatically make it anti-competitive.

Please forgive my ignorance as I am far from any sort of database guru, but...so what?

Mysql does everything I want and probably more since, as I said, I am no guru; there are probably tons of things I would use and don't even know about. I very much doubt that sun plans to (or could) come banging down my door demanding that I pay them for a license or stop using their newly acquired software.

I guess my point is that mysql does everything that I want. If nothing new comes out, this is not a big deal to me. If it turns out that there is some new feature that i want, and mysql doesn't have it, I will have to switch to a database that does.

Could somebody explain why I should care about this? It seems like people are crying over spilled milk that hasn't even been spilled yet. "Oh no! There might be features that might have been developed for mysql at some point in the future that I might miss out on!"

When was the last time you upgraded your operating system? Even if it's just a patch.

Nothing in technology stands still, and while I can see the 'surface logic' of what you are saying the reality doesn't stand up.

Like any software product, MySQL has bugs. You might not run across them in day to day use, but they're there. If development stops, those will never get fixed.

Actually MySQL last stable version was released with at least two critical issues left unresolved...

I've mostly moved over to PostgreSQL by now...

Is this the result of MySQL adopting the GPL license? I mean, what about if MySQL were BSD licensed?

That's another can of worms. If it were BSD licensed, they would not have made so much money, because they couldn't have done the dual-licensing trick.

Indeed, this is surely a price to pay, BSD will hardly make you rich even with a very successful product, but the project itself is much more protected probably.

Actually not.

When it's GPL'ed, there can be no proprietary forks. Companies who depend on the product will continue to maintain it and all source will still be available as keeping an internal fork is costlier.

If a program is BSD'ed, there is nothing to prevent a company to close it and start selling it as proprietary.

Proprietary forks are an illusion. The value of the project is in its developers, to take the code, close it, and develop it getting external developers, good ideas, and so forth, is a massive amount of work. This is why you can think of tons of BSD-ish very successful projects not forked.

Instead the real risk is that GPL is not free enough.

> Proprietary forks are an illusion.

The most famous counter example is SunOS, which was directly based on the Berkeley code.

Of course, times are different now - the internet has changed a lot of things.

And most of what's left of SunOS is GPLv3.

A proprietary fork can diverge very little, still grabbing the improvements of the original project. The reason you don't hear about them is because the vendors of such software have no incentive (and mostly no need) to say their product is mostly something they got for free.

I suspect they are more common than we know.

In essence, the only freedom GPL forces you to give up is the freedom to turn a free product into a proprietary one.

No, it is not. But it is a result of overconfidence, caused by belief that GPL is a silver bullet. People, who run BSD-licensed projects, in my observation, tend to be more cautious, because BSD license provides no protection against "privatization".

I'm not convinced, this is what I read at http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/10/importance-of-license...

Most of the technology partners, where most of the innovation in the MySQL space happen nowadays, depend on being able to get licenses for MySQL so that they can combine their closed source application or closed code (like storage engines) with MySQL

This is clearly a problem with GPL. The economic model of a BSD-licensed product can't be broken just not selling licenses, as everybody will continue to use the code for whatever purpose.

Refusing to subsidize proprietary work is the purpose of the GPL. It's only a problem for vendors who become dependent on buying non-GPL licenses and will not open their own work.

And decrying a problem only after he stopped getting paid for perpetuating it? Wow. That's like selling your house and then urging it be condemned.

No, the problem is the dual-license strategy combined with changing business models. If it had been pure GPL from the start, anyone who couldn't work with that would never have used it in the first place. But because they sold licenses for closed source use, now there are customers using it who may be stuck choosing from three unpleasant options--keep using unmaintained code (if the license even allows that), find a way to use GPLed code, or find a new database.

It's not really any different from what would happen if a proprietary software vendor went out of business or killed a product, since that's effectively exactly what happened. The fact that the code also exists in GPL form is largely irrelevant and I don't know why you're focusing on it.

Without the dual-license strategy available, BSD software doesn't really HAVE an economic model other than charity (nor does pure GPL of course--just look at RMS--but at least GPL gives you the warm feeling of knowing that no one will be purely freeloading off your generosity).

I don't think so.

BSD business models:

* Services: training, consultancy, ...

and MOST important:

* Closed source "PRO" versions. This has a number of declinations. For instance only add "enterprise" features in the closed source fork, or alternatively develop an important feature for the closed source fork and release it for the open source one after N months, and so forth.

A plugin system can also work: develop a number of closed source plugins about features that are not so general to enter in the real release but that many people think they absolutely need, and sell this plugins. Note that here you are not undervaluing the open source fork as this are stuff that anyway you don't think are so general to be included.

Why did you omit work for hire? New features aren't free software when they haven't been created yet, even if you open them at release.

Who are we to tell Oracle to devote their resources to something that we think needs development? They own Sun and MySQL. If this does not suit someone: fork it. End of story.

Just send an email as Michael Widenius suggested. Every little bit counts!

As a resident (but not a citizen) of Europe, I sent an email telling them that I think they should let the acquisition happen as is, with no strings attached.

I will send one. Since I like MySQL (although I like PostgreSQL better) I will write a letter asking Oracle not to change the license and keep it GPL. If possible, to move it to GPLv3.

I like my software completely free.

There is no 'Undo' for selling your copyright.

Has Widenius offered to buy MySQL back?

MySQL is already lost. It is necessary to focus on Postgres now. It still seems to be non-private.

Technically, Postgres has always been more or less superior, outside of a few things like replication. But that's another argument for another day.

Our DBAs once walked in and asked how to handle all the rows where most of slaves have different values than the master. That this is even possible, I think says it all about MySQL replication.

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