Jaslabs: High performance Software

By Justin Silverton

In a recent announcement:

“MySQL has today refined its licensing scheme from “GPLv2 or later” to “GPLv2 only“, in order to make it an option, not an obligation for the company to move to GPLv3.

Specifically, this means that copyright notice in the MySQL source code files will change from referring to “either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version” to “version 2” only, in the MySQL 5.0 and MySQL 5.1 code bases”

Mysql is one of the best examples of a successful open source project and it is used by many businesses and people around the Internet.

If the FSF wants free software to be widely supported and used by the masses (which seems to be one of their main goals), they need to start looking more at the needs of businesses (which may actually get us better driver support for linux).

Although the FSF is still in the drafting process of the GPLV3,   there are still some big changes that will most likely make it to the final version:

• GPL software can is not compatible with digital rights managements (DRM)
• Patents cannot be used to make free software non-free
• If your work communicates with an online service, it must be possible for modified versions to communicate with the same online service in the same way such that the service cannot distinguish

more information can be found here

A more restrictive license is not the answer.  This will make businesses think twice before deciding to use or contribute to free software.