As reported yesterday from CommunityOne:

• MySQL Server is and will always remain fully functional and open source,
• so will the MySQL Connectors, and
• so will the main storage engines we ship.

In addition:

• MySQL 6.0’s pending backup functionality will be open source,
• the MyISAM driver for MySQL Backup will be open source, and
• the encryption and compression backup features will be open source,

where the last item is a change of direction from what we were considering before.

The change comes from MySQL now being part of Sun Microsystems. Our initial plans were made for a company considering an IPO, but made less sense in the context of Sun, a large company with a whole family of complementary open source software and hardware products.

I’d like to shed some light on the big picture, in two different ways — openness, and the business model.

MySQL’s openness manifests itself in three ways:

• MySQL’s code is open.
• MySQL’s APIs are open.
• MySQL’s data formats are open.

These form a foundation around the MySQL Server and its connectors on which we (Sun), our partners, and the community can all freely build upon. And through this openness, we will always provide a means for our users to easily export their data from MySQL.

Then for MySQL’s business model. To financially support MySQL’s free and open source platform, we have a business model which allows both community and commercial add-ons, and we remain committed to it. We believe the model to be useful for both those who spend money to save time, and those who spend time to save money.

As Mårten mentioned yesterday in the CommunityOne panel, expect Sun/MySQL to continue experimenting with the business model, and with what’s offered for the community and what’s offered commercial-only. We won’t always know the right answer from the beginning, but we want MySQL to be the most popular database for both paying and non-paying users.

With 130 entries in the “MySQL” category and no MySQL-related subcategories, my blog had become impossible to search and navigate easily.

And thus I created a number of new categories for the MySQL entries within my blog. They’re listed in the left navigation bar, below the months, as well as below:

• MySQL Server, MySQL Cluster, Falcon
• Connectors: PHP, Ruby on Rails
• Tools: GUI, MySQL Workbench, MySQL Proxy
• Events: MySQL Users Conferences
• Licensing: GPL
• Architecture of Participation, Summer of Code, Virtual company
• Other: Release Policy, Documentation, Use cases

I hope this will make my blog more (re)usable.

(The picture is from this summer, when navigating the way up the Großvenediger, a 3662 m high mountain in the Hohe Tauern region of Austria.)

We congratulate the Free Software Foundation on the release of GPLv3 and offer our thanks to the many individuals in the open source community who participated in the process of drafting the license.

It’s good to see overall improvements in GPLv3 over GPLv2, when it comes to compatibility with other Free/Open Source Software licenses, to the compatibility with other legislations than the US legal system, and to strengthened incompatibility with Software Patents. I am also happy if the work of the Committee B ends up contributing to a better adoption of GPLv3. I am in awe as to the patience and skillful diplomacy with which Eben Moglen could tame the group consisting of everything from techies from comparatively small companies (like Trolltech and ourselves) to the seniormost lawyers from the biggest Fortune 500 companies.

MySQL will continue to monitor the industry’s reaction and adoption of the new license, as we decide the best overall course for our community, our company, our users and our customers.

MySQL is indebted to the Software Freedom Law Center for very good advice and insight on how to combine Free Software with a viable business model. SFLC provides legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software. Founded in 2005, the Center now represents many of the most important and well-established free software and open source projects.

Professor Eben Moglen, SFLC director and FSF legal counsel, has provided us with profound guidance over the years. We have tried to give something back through our work in the GPLv3 Committee B, but our time resources as a small company are limited in comparison to our fellow committee members.

In recognition of Eben’s help and as a token of our appreciation, we’ve made a small donation to support the continued work of the SFLC. We encourage others who build their business on free software to do the same.

Thank you, Eben!

Today, FSF released the third GPLv3 draft on http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl3-dd3-guide . It’s great that the entire, complex process now has completed its next milestone, and I can fully understand why the FSF has seen it necessary to proceed at a pace somewhat slower than originally intended.

My thoughts go back well over a year to the Free Software Foundation’s first conference on GPLv3, at the end of January 2006. It was a great meeting, and as a Committee B member and representative of MySQL, I was asked by China Martens of IDG for my input. My reply “I think there was a good balance between different hair and beard lengths” ended up on China’s compilation “2006: The IT year in quotes” as “a colourful description of the cross-section of attendees”.

I wish I had something equivalently colourful to describe the third draft of GPLv3. “A good balance between FSF’s interest to protect software freedom in the name of the end user, and the interests of the industry to develop sustainable business models upon Free Software“? I hope I will feel able to use that for the final GPLv3 one day.

For now, MySQL continues to be actively engaged in the Free Software Foundation’s GPLv3 drafting process, the next step of which is the upcoming 60 days that should end up in a final draft. Our flagship product, the MySQL database server, remains licensed under GPLv2.

Until the new version of GPL is finalised, we won’t be in a position to determine whether GPLv3 is an appropriate license for MySQL products. As I said at the end of last year in my blog, until we get clear and strong indications for the general acceptance of GPLv3 over GPLv2, we feel comfortable with a specific GPLv2 reference in our license. So while we support and care for the GPLv3 process, don’t expect us to be amongst the first GPLv3 movers.

By the way, don’t miss Eben Moglen’s keynote at the MySQL Conference & Expo 23-26 April 2007 in Santa Clara, California! Eben is not only a brilliant mind and shaper of the future, but one of the best public speakers I have ever heard.

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.

Six years ago in the summer of 2000, when MySQL AB licensed its software under the GPL, our founders David Axmark and Michael Widenius made this choice because the GPL was a license followed and respected by everyone. We have kept to it, because the GPL is the most palatable license, and poses the least friction for our user base.

MySQL has been part of the GPLv3 Committee B advising FSF since the GPLv3 draft was announced in January 2006. For GPLv3, we have seen fantastic improvements and hope for GPLv3 to spread. Even though my activity level as co-chair for Committee B was by far higher in the spring than what it has been in the past few months, MySQL AB continues to work with the FSF for GPLv3 to be the new, widespread license under which Free Software is licensed. However, now, until we get clear and strong indications for the general acceptance of GPLv3 over GPLv2, we feel comfortable with a specific GPLv2 reference in our license.

I have been in contact on the topic with Professor Eben Moglen, General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, and Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. He has emailed me:

I appreciate MySQL’s thoughtful contribution to the GPLv3 drafting process, showing how a business model and an entire company can be built around Free Software. Looking at recent developments and announcements, I believe MySQL will soon be in a position to see the GPLv3 being adopted over GPLv2 by various Free Software projects.

I think the FSF has done a great job in preparing the first draft for GPLv3. “The FSF” here means Richard Stallman plus Eben Mogler, their lawyer.

The GPLv3 first draft was launched today 16 Jan 2006 here at MIT in Boston. It’s the start of a nearly year-long process with at least one more coordinated draft (in late June) published before a final release, likely in November. Those are the likely dates; earlier and later dates are possible at least in theory.

Generally speaking, GPLv3 tries to address all important GPLv2 shortcomings. Judging from what I’ve seen and examined so far, it does quite a good job of it. Let’s see where the discussions go.

Discussions now take place fully openly over the FSF GPLv3 website with those who represent special interest groups being invited by the FSF to four Discussion Groups.

• Group A is major projects (e.g. Perl, Apache, Debian)
• Group B is Big Business creating or embedding GPL software (e.g. IBM, Sun, HP, but also Trolltech, Red Hat, MySQL)
• Group C is big users (e.g. government, enterprises)
• Group D is individual hackers, other “leftovers” not fitting into other groups

Together with the Senior Counsel IP of Hewlett Packard, I got elected co-chair of Group B.

The draft and its rationale can be found at http://gplv3.fsf.org/draft and http://gplv3.fsf.org/rationale respectively.

GPLv3 attempts at solving several issues:

1. making it compatible with non-US law

• using “propagation” instead of “distribution”
• detaching language from US-specific statutory law
• perhaps introducing official non-English translations

2. making it more compatible with other FOSS licenses

• doing large parts of what the MySQL “FOSS Exception” does today

3. create options where none exist today

• allow requiring GPLv3 users to make their server-side SW downloadable
• enable patent retaliation against offensive patent holders

4. clarify the intention of preserving freedom in current gray areas

• disable GPL SW use with Digital Rights/Restrictions Management

There is going to be some controversy in the GPLv3, but most of the work will be plenty of eye-balls attempting to find bugs in the wording of mostly non-controversial issues. As the patent retaliation and server-side download clauses are optional, they are not nearly as hot as the DRM incompatibility.

For most (practically all) GPL software, the license is written in such a way that the upgrade from GPLv2 to GPLv3 will happen automatically, without any actions needed (or even possible) by the developers. There is an auto-upgrade clause in GPLv2.

We do have to understand that there is a long process ahead of GPLv3 until it becomes reality. But the atmosphere of the day was a good one, with the attendees showing proper respect for RMS and Eben, for the process and for each other. The task at hand is not a power play but one of discovering and documenting argumentation, flaws, and logic towards FSF, who as benevolent dictator will decide what GPLv3 will be.

I’m looking forward to contributing to the GPLv3 process!