Re: Will Open Source be forced to go Proprietary

The world rejoiced as chris@travelamericas.com ("Chris Travers") wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>
>> Yes I did see that. Actually from what I know of the GPL, this could very
>> well be the case.
>
> The GPL specifically allows non-Free/Open Source components to talk
> to GPL'd applications via pipes and sockets.  I am assuming here
> that network sockets are included, so there is NO copyright reason
> that, were the protocol reverse engineered that a third-party mysql
> driver couldn't be written.  Of course, you could NOT use the MySQL
> source to do it.

The problem here is not particularly with the GPL; your reading of the
GPL appears consistent with _other_ interpretations of it.

The two things about MySQL are that:

 a) Its owners seem to have an interestingly aggressive interpretation
    of how the license that they chose applies to their software;

 b) Its owners have given indication that they are prepared to take
    legal action against "open source" developers that disagree with
    their interpretation of the license they have chosen.

The latter is what gives people pause.  The company presumably has a
few million dollars of their venture capital left, and therefore can
afford more lawyers than most of the rest of us can.
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