Re: Oracle buys Innobase

tfo(at)sitening(dot)com ("Thomas F. O'Connell") writes:
> On Oct 8, 2005, at 6:40 PM, Mitch Pirtle wrote:
>
>> On 10/8/05, Mitch Pirtle <mitch(dot)pirtle(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>>> This basically means that InnoDB table support must come out of the
>>> commercial MySQL.
>>
>> For that matter, I'm not sure they can release MySQL under a
>> commercial license while incorporating 3rd party GPL works, without
>> the express permission of the copyright holders for those included
>> works.
>>
>> Whatever deal they used to have just got changed, that's for sure.
>
> All of which seems to beg the question: why did not MySQL buy
> Innobase themselves? As far as I've read, the terms of the
> transaction were not disclosed. I guess it's possible that MySQL
> didn't have the financial reach to pull off the deal.

It is interesting that MySQL AB did not put some option into their
original deal with InnoDB that would make it easy for them to do a
buyout of the code in case "something naughty might happen."

If I were making my product dependent on [X], I'd want to be careful
to assure myself that I could continue to have access to [X];
according to what I see in the Oracle statement, it doesn't appear as
though there was anything more specific than a contract ending some
time next year.

Mind you, it is not public what goes away in 2006. It is possible
that MySQL AB has a more-or-less perpetual license to use InnoDB as it
stands today, in which case it would be entirely possible that they
would fork the code base, and maintain the "MySQL version of InnoDB"
themselves. Continuing access to the present version would represent
a reasonable "option" for MySQL AB...

In any case, there are doubtless a few lawyers in Europe that are
pretty busy this weekend :-).
--
output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "acm.org")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/linuxxian.html
I just removed the instructions in MC:COMMON;LINS > which specify that
it should be installed on AI. We'll certainly miss that machine, and
probably spend the rest of our lives fixing programs that mention it.