Ellison: No MySQL spin off

The EU does a lot of things right but they need to get out of the way on this one. There's still plenty of competition in the db market even if MySQL and Oracle merge.

Too lazy to look it up, if MySQL is GPL or better, and the new Oracle Overlords decide to squash it, it's fork time.

I cannot say I'm surprised, either by the EU's actions or Oracle's reactions. Saying why I'm not surprised has been deemed, sadly, a TOS violation.

There's not much in this article. Here's SJVN's take (he initially argued that the EU should leave it alone, but changed his mind): http://blogs.computerworld.com/14683/why_the_eu_should_block...

It's not actually an open source issue, because most business users do not use MySQL under the GPL.

There is a version of MySQL which is "forkable" ... but that is not the point.

MySQL has a bunch of "Commercial Customers".

Those commercial customers ARE competing with Oracle and it is those customers who are going to be impacted.

There are already MySQL forks out there like MariaDB: http://askmonty.org/wiki/index.php/MariaDB

But you can't really transition the EU customers off MySQL and onto one of these other DBs easily. MySQL has a corporate infrastructure and dual licensing, etc. Some of the corporate clients do not want the GPL version ... and they pay to use the other license.

I do know that the "evil corporate types" (see Carla's community article ... some are not happy about them) are driving most of the feature upgrades to MySQL at this time and paying to make them happen ... and without that group, the major incentive driving the newest features goes away.

Oracle might keep up the other business model, and all might just turn out OK ... I do not know how to call this one.

I do know it is a dangerous thing.

> I do know it is a dangerous thing.

It is the same "dangerous" argument concerning any non-GPL software: The real owner might go out of business, or get bought, or whatever.

A case-in-point of "free as in freedom".

> It is the same "dangerous" argument concerning any non-GPL software

Absolutely - and one of the reasons I use FOSS for work. Being locked out of your software because of a licensing screwup for two weeks is bad on a home computer, but makes you bald when it happens on a work computer.