Re:MySQL 6.0 Nixed?
by rbanffy on Friday October 09, 2009 @11:05PM
(#872861)
"In that case, how has the GPL and Linux's "business friendly" license made a difference?"
There are probably more company-sponsored developers contributing to Linux than there are FreeBSD developers. There is a rich ecosystem with companies making money out of support assurance. In the case of FreeBSD, the obvious case is like Juniper: embed and close up. They give back whatever they think is not important because they don't want to spend money maintaining.
"The GPL. The usual "if you don't distribute it, you don't have to GPL it" argument is disingenuous given that all but a few real-world use cases require distribution."
If I contribute something to a GPL project, the copyright is still mine. Nobody but me - and that is the difference that made MySQL possoble - can distribute it in violation of the GPL. Also, the rationale that IBM donates resources to Linux in order to create an advantage to their service organization simply doesn't make sense. All of Linux is open. There are no secret advantages there. The only not patently impossible scenario here is IBM somewhat steering the development of Linux in ways that favour them in the future. But this is a very long shot.
GPL incentives sharing. BSD doesn't. It's not anti-business, but anti-effort-duplication.
And, BTW, I wouldn't be surprised if the Nvidia's binary driver were more related to the bad things that could happen to Windows support for Nvidia GPUs in the future.
There are probably more company-sponsored developers contributing to Linux than there are FreeBSD developers. There is a rich ecosystem with companies making money out of support assurance. In the case of FreeBSD, the obvious case is like Juniper: embed and close up. They give back whatever they think is not important because they don't want to spend money maintaining.
"The GPL. The usual "if you don't distribute it, you don't have to GPL it" argument is disingenuous given that all but a few real-world use cases require distribution."
If I contribute something to a GPL project, the copyright is still mine. Nobody but me - and that is the difference that made MySQL possoble - can distribute it in violation of the GPL. Also, the rationale that IBM donates resources to Linux in order to create an advantage to their service organization simply doesn't make sense. All of Linux is open. There are no secret advantages there. The only not patently impossible scenario here is IBM somewhat steering the development of Linux in ways that favour them in the future. But this is a very long shot.
GPL incentives sharing. BSD doesn't. It's not anti-business, but anti-effort-duplication.
And, BTW, I wouldn't be surprised if the Nvidia's binary driver were more related to the bad things that could happen to Windows support for Nvidia GPUs in the future.