Re:The time has come to stand up for the GPL
by shiggerino on Saturday March 07, 2015 @05:40AM
(#9161547)
How is Apache Harmony more open? Easier to get in extensions without going through all the committees? You can do that with a fork of the OpenJDK too, nothing in the GPL preventing that.
As for MySQL, I don't see how the existence of a proprietary version of MySQL is somehow the GPL's fault. The users would be even more at a disadvantage if the proprietary version was the only one that existed and there was no free version, so the existence of the GPL version is a net benefit for everyone.
Not that it's a particularly good idea to buy a proprietary license or even contribute code to Oracle. PostgreSQL will treat you much more fairly. It doesn't require copyright attribution from their contributors, it's governed by a 501(c)(3) charity in the US and a similar non-profit in the EU rather than a company that only looks out for itself.
There is nothing wrong with making a profit with software, but signing an expensive restrictive EULA for a database is just a bad deal, whether you're a small startup or a major corporation.
As for MySQL, I don't see how the existence of a proprietary version of MySQL is somehow the GPL's fault. The users would be even more at a disadvantage if the proprietary version was the only one that existed and there was no free version, so the existence of the GPL version is a net benefit for everyone.
Not that it's a particularly good idea to buy a proprietary license or even contribute code to Oracle. PostgreSQL will treat you much more fairly. It doesn't require copyright attribution from their contributors, it's governed by a 501(c)(3) charity in the US and a similar non-profit in the EU rather than a company that only looks out for itself.
There is nothing wrong with making a profit with software, but signing an expensive restrictive EULA for a database is just a bad deal, whether you're a small startup or a major corporation.