On Wednesday 22 Apr 2009, Anupam Jain wrote: > On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Raj Mathur <[email protected]> wrote: > > Since as of today MySQL is GPL, you cannot force a single user of > > MySQL in a FOSS application to pay you a single paisa. Sorry to > > bust your dreams, but Oracle can only make people pay from the next > > release of MySQL (if they switch it to a proprietary licence), and > > those people can still continue to use the current release and > > forks thereof with no problems and no payment. > > Does MySQL have *zero* community contributed code licensed under GPL? > If not then doesn't that prevent Oracle from charging even for the > next version?
MySQL requires all contributors to the code to assign copyright to MySQL AB (now Sun (now Oracle)). So Oracle holds copyright to the complete codebase, which means that they can theoretically make the next release proprietary without infringing on anyone's rights. They would end up earning a lot of ill-will from the community if they do that, though, so they probably won't. My guess is they'll keep MySQL around as a pet to scare off those nasty SQL Server types. BTW, please note that charging or not (i.e. commercial or non-commercial) is a different question from proprietary vs FOSS. Regards, -- Raju -- Raj Mathur [email protected] http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
