gnu-misc-discuss
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [!NEWS] The GNUtards Must Be Crazy


From: Alexander Terekhov
Subject: Re: [!NEWS] The GNUtards Must Be Crazy
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:55:02 +0100

Hyman Rosen wrote:
[...]
> > (hint: the GPL lost miserably in MySQL v. Nusphere/Progress)
> 
> Of course it did not. The parties settled and NuSphere released
> its add-on code under the GPL.

You're full of bullshit Hyman. Take this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010816123611/http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/07/12/2142237

------
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."

He adds: "In effect, while they use the GPL as the way they distribute
their product, they deny other people from contributing."

MySQL.org is the "natural outcome" of MySQL AB not allowing others to
contribute to the code, Johnston contends. "From an Open Source
community perspective, which I'm a strong believer in, if it wasn't
NuSphere, someone else would do it," he says. "When they back away from
the Open Source community, someone has to fill the void. If you look at
other Open Source communities that have been successful, they all have a
very strong community that's not centrally controlled by one commercial
entity. While you can say that's not been the case with MySQL in the
past, that's dramatically changing."

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."

The project founders' control of the code has never been in doubt,
Mickos says, and that control doesn't violate the spirit of Open Source.
"Anybody can see the source, anybody can modify it, but we are not
accepting into our version anything that isn't copyrighted by us. If you
want to go out on your own and do a fork, we don't like it, but you're
free to do it."

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. He says NuSphere has worked with MySQL AB in
good faith, and the company is attempting to change the rules in
mid-agreement.

"What we want to do, in launching MySQL.org, is create a non-commercial
community around MySQL that we think is essential for its long-term
growth and health," Johnston says.

But Mickos tells a different story, saying NuSphere and MySQL AB had an
interim partnership since June 2000, but NuSphere served his company
with a lawsuit last month after MySQL AB officials came to Massachusetts
to negotiate a more formal partnership. This week, MySQL AB turned
around and countersued NuSphere for trademark infringement, breach of
contract, and violation of the GPL.

Also last month, NuSphere registered the MySQL.org domain name, and
Mickos claims his company wasn't told. "They claim that our interim
agreement is in force, but they're not informing us of things that
relate to MySQL, which is a contradiction," he says. "We said, 'Hey,
guys, what are you doing? We're building a partnership and you're
registering a domain name that should be ours' We said in a letter, 'You
must hand it over to us,' and they refused."

Johnston says NuSphere told MySQL AB it would release Gemini under the
GPL next Monday, but Mickos says he had "no firm information" that was
the case. He adds: "If they do, I really welcome it, because then they
are getting away from the violation. But it doesn't change the fact that
they have been violating the GPL for sometime already."

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."
------

regards,
alexander.

--
http://gng.z505.com/index.htm
(GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can
be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards
too, whereas GNU cannot.)


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]