[AccessD] Clearing the decks for MySQL

Hans-Christian Andersen hans.andersen at phulse.com
Fri Nov 25 12:13:14 CST 2011



> Oracle can take the MariaDB enhancements and either incorporate them
> into their version and give them away OR…. It can even sell them ?

Technically, you can, but only as a redistribution price and you are bound by terms of the GPL to also distribute the source code along with it. You cannot "sell the software" as in "selling the rights to use it". That is not permissible, since they do not own the rights to the MariaDB source code.

>  the money is no longer in the code,  but in the SUPPORT and, MAINTENANCE agreement,  correct ?

That's right. Also, a lot of open source businesses are supported by means of funding by different companies that depend on their products. And, on occasion, those businesses then get snapped up by larger organisations (ie. Oracle, IBM, etc). On the flip side, if the project is very successful in the community and the owners prefer to donate their project to the greater good of the community, what can also happen is that they donate the code to the protection of someone like the Apache Software Foundation (ie. like Hadoop, Apache web server, Cassandra DB, etc).

- Hans



On 2011-11-25, at 9:34 AM, Mark Simms wrote:

> Wow, let get this crazy GPL stuff straight:
> 
> Oracle can take the MariaDB enhancements and either incorporate them into
> their version and give them away OR....
> It can even sell them ?
> 
> Again, I guess I really must understand that in the open source software
> business, the money is no longer in the code, but in the SUPPORT and
> MAINTENANCE agreement, correct ?
> 
> 
> 
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