Re: Use of GPL'd code with proprietary programs

[Alexander Terekhov]

David Kastrup wrote:
[...]
> As if you ever were impressed by facts.
> 
> <URL:http://www.linuxbusinessweek.com/story/34553.htm>

Oh boy. Go and do some research. The open sourcing of Gemini was 
a "non-issue" for NuSphere and it was acctually "almost done" before 
the clash. I'll give you a sort of hint for the search...

<quote>

Johnston says at the heart of the issue is a pending lawsuit in 
which the two companies are suing each other over their changing 
relationship and trademark issues.

Neither side would talk in great detail about the pending lawsuits, 
but Johnston says NuSphere hasn't been allowed to participate 
in the existing community at MySQL AB's MySQL.com.

"We tried to submit changes [to the MySQL code] under the GPL to 
that site, and they were refused on a commercial basis, not on a 
technical basis," Johnston adds. "The code works fine, and we 
ship it as part of our GPL version of MySQL ... but they are not 
available from MySQL.com, because they won't accept anything they 
don't own the copyright to."

[...]

MySQL AB's Mickos, on the phone from Finland, says the MySQL code, 
while being Open Source, has always been created almost entirely by 
project founders Michael "Monty" Widenius and David Axmark.

"It has never been a 'bazaar' product like in The Cathedral and 
the Bazaar," Mickos says. "It's not a product everybody has 
contributed to, and that never was the intention.

"Monty has never accepted code contributions from other people," 
Mickos adds. "If he has gotten something [from someone else], they 
have been donations to him, and he rewrites them, but that's minor. 
There never has been a situation where anybody could freely 
contribute code."

[...]

Johnston says the two companies worked together on a press release 
about Gemini being part of version 4 of MySQL, but NuSphere is still 
waiting for that code to be released. "We checked the Gemini code 
into that source tree, but that source tree hasn't left the gate 
yet," he says. "Now they've refused our ability to contribute Gemini 
at all. So that's an interesting claim."

</quote>

Heck, the entire article can be found here:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/07/12/2142237
(NuSphere: MySQL.org needed because MySQL AB won't accept code)

Kinda ironically, 

<quote>

Johnston says the relationship between the two companies has changed 
over the past couple of months, as MySQL AB has accepted venture 
capital and brought in a new CEO. 

</quote>

See the parallels? ;-)

regards,
alexander. 

P.S.

http://www.politechbot.com/p-03194.html
http://www.nusphere.com/releases/2002/022702_malert.htm