Re: Humor me: Postgresql vs. MySql (esp. licensing)

In the last exciting episode, Randolf Richardson <rr@8x.ca> wrote:

>         Of course I'll attempt to get an official response from the

> legal department of such a company before jumping to any

> conclusions.  In the case of MySQL, if I wanted to develop a project

> that was not open source and didn't comply with the GPL, I'd send a

> letter (or eMail) to MySQL and ask for clarity on what my

> obligations would be with regards to their licensing and my product

> (and would also include a general outline of how my product will use

> MySQL).



I'm reasonably sure that their answer would point you to the "brief

description," namely:



  "This is our licensing policy in brief: Our software is 100% GPL,

  and if yours is also 100% GPL (or OSI compliant), then you never

  have to pay us for the licences. In all other instances, you are

  better served by our commercial licence."



Their "licensing page" says it quite explicitly:



  "To anyone in doubt, we recommend the commercial licence. It is

   never wrong."



Which gives the pretty clear underlying message:



It's not really "open source" or "free software;" to anyone in doubt,

reality is that it's traditionally-licensed commercial software, at

several hundred dollars a pop.



I can't see them being particularly interested in giving explanations

that would lead to people _not_ sending in a cheque...



>> <http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=sapdb-general&m=106045880005921&w=2>

>

>         Yikes!  That just hits me as rather vague.  Perhaps I need to

> look at it more closely and think it through when my daughter's not

> watching the Teletubbies.  =D



It was a pretty stunning claim to see, yes, indeed...



>         Keep in mind that (at least in Canada) contractual agreements

> are only valid when an aspect called "consideration" exists, which

> means that both parties benefit in some way (which must not be

> grossly unfair to one side).



In the US, I believe it is common for contracts to have a clause

reading something like "with the exchange of one dollar plus other

valuable consideration."



I don't see it being a big problem to consider that there is some kind

of benefit to both sides in the use of free software.



- The use of the software is presumably somewhat valuable to the

  users;



- If the producers of the software do not receive an express "value,"

  the fact that they offered it freely for use would make it seem very

  peculiar for them to complain of abuse.



> With all this mish-mash of various licenses, I wonder how

> "consideration" would fit in to it all.  My feeling is that a court

> would likely be considering this (along with many other factors)

> when examining the bigger picture of intent in order to determine if

> there really was any damage done to all parties involved.  Certainly

> one important aspect of such a decision would be to understand what

> the various license owners knew about how the industry works at

> present, which would probably keep the lawyers busy for months if

> not years since most are non-technical.



In the case of the "M guys," it isn't likely to be Canadian law that

would be relevant, in that the company is based in Sweden.



In the case of PostgreSQL, the lack of a "legal team" would suggest

that the 'relevant jurisdiction' for any legal conflict would likely

be established by whomever started a case...



> DISCLAIMER: I'm not a lawyer so I'm just going by assumptions based

> on what I've learned about the law as a layperson over the years

> (and from watching The People's Court).



Good 'ol Judge Wapnner...  :-)



Of course, he's expressing a parody of US law, which, in a number of

ways, is conspicuously different from Canadian law, just as the

respective political processes are rather different.  (Canada, by use

of low-tech voting processes, seems to have a vastly more robust

electoral process due to the absence of such problems as "hanging

chad."  On the other hand, prime ministers can behave as near

dictators during their tenures, absent of the US "checks and

balances"...)



And in the post-OJ era, it is pretty evident that a vital component is

that he who has the most expensive team of lawyers and/or lobbyists

will substantially influence the process.  This month, we're seeing

the "entertainment" of what's going on with SCO and Michael Jackson,

and it is evident that there is _massive_ perversity going on in both

cases, irrespective of the factual merits of the cases.  Whether MJ's

"Truly Bad" or not, he's pretty loopy.



And the recent threats against BSD projects demonstrates that NO free

software project can consider itself safe from legal attack.



If the Debian project had decided to drop PostgreSQL due to "paranoid

readings" of its license, that might be pooh-poohed as the ravings of

GPL fans.  It is most interesting when it's the OpenBSD guys that turn

up the paranoid ones this week...

--

select 'cbbrowne' || '@' || 'cbbrowne.com';

http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/languages.html

Oh,  boy, virtual memory!  Now I'm  gonna make  myself a  really *big*

RAMdisk!



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