Office Software Politics

[Mike Kallies]

On 10/25/2010 6:58 PM, Sadiq Saif wrote:
> I just got the .deb packages from their site, running smoothly on my
> Ubuntu 10.10 system.
> 
> Also, I don't know much about MySQL, but isn't it the industry standard
> for web hosting databases etc.?

MySQL is great.  It's not going to disappear, it may fork though.

MySQL kept their codebase under a single, ownable copyright so that they
can dual-license the code.  This means that all patches and updates have
been given to the single copyright holder.

The holder of the copyright of this kind of dual license can stop
releasing updates under the second license and effectively close their
fork.  The outcry would be severe enough that an open fork would be
inevitable.

The real barrier to a fully-open fork of any code is finding reliable
leadership, but it's happened in the past.

IMHO, Oracle should sell the copyright on the MySQL codebase, it's a
conflict of interest to keep it... it's a competing product and it has
real value.


-Mike
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