Ok, since we're already OT, or semi-OT I'll bite... maybe just a nibble. ;)

You say the Derby Apache OS license is "lite?" I'm confused by this. Or perhaps it's having a separate supported commercial version you are uncomfortable with. Why?

Compare to MySQL. MySQL uses a dual-license strategy.... there is a GPL version, but also a commercial license that you must use for commercial products distribution. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing MySQL, and MySQL and Derby do different things well. But if you want to resell your MySQL-based product to customers, you need to pay them a fee, no? Sometimes a very big fee. And I seem to recall if you want to do ACID-compliant transactions, row-locking, so on you also need InnoDB. Again, to resell you have to buy a license... more money.

Not so with Derby... all of this is available for commercial distribution, without constraints of the need for additional licenses.

MySQL AG also maintains only *one code base* for MySQL server, and they run that code against a standard test suite. This is great, and smart IMHO. But my point... in view of their strategy, do you think MySQL is "lite"ing open source as well?

-Rayme.

P.S. By way of full disclosure, I have been an IBM consultant in the past. All opinions are my own.


On Apr 4, 2005, at 12:27 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


> Cloudscape is the IBM supported version... if you care about
> IBM support, you'd want this version. I believe they're doing it this
> way do they can control what they need to support.


Probably so.  That really just makes sense, and it seems to be a
pretty standard model for companies looking to make money from code
which is nominally "free."  Release it to the world, let it develop
as open-source, and then occassionally take a snap-shot of the
code, do any clean-up / value-add stuff, and then release it as
a commercial product.  Of course the interesting thing is that anybody
could do the exact same thing, even "Bob's Screen Door Repair and
Relational Databases, LLC."  So what IBM is really selling in a sense
is their reputation (versus Bob, for example).

Personally, I think that the "lite"ing of open source is really not open source at all. It means
closed communities, seperate forks, its unteniable and results in something more resembling
"shared source". Plus its just damn confusing and makes for bad branding.


Of course this is my personal opinion only.
-Andy


TTYL,


Phil



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