Re: [Trisquel-users] jQuery 1.8 released with an interesting license change

[adrian . malacoda]

For a project like jQuery, which was offered under either the MIT or the GPL,  
the change means practically nothing, as the MIT license is compatible with  
the GPL anyway.

The GPL actually has a not so obvious downside if one entity holds the  
copyright to the entire codebase - it can be used in a licensing scheme known  
as "open core" (see  
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/10/16/open-core-shareware.html) where the  
copyright holder can peddle their proprietary addons because they as the  
copyright holder are not bound by GPL's copyleft. This is typically indicated  
by the presence of a free "Community Edition" and a "Pro Edition" or  
"Enterprise Edition" with added proprietary parts. I think this is the case  
with mysql, actually. These feel more like traditional proprietary companies  
in that the free version is meant to be demoware or crippleware.