Do you have an idea how many good applications are infected by GPL? GPL is not developer friendly unless you want your source to be open at which point its all good if that is your intention.
Developers who release tools or resources under GPL, should explain to other smaller developers that any application developer who develop using their libraries, controls or modules will be infected by using said components. The only confusion comes from saying that GPL is developer friendly. Do you know how many much more highend free projects would be available if we did not have to open our source codes? -----Original Message----- From: "Guyren Howe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "REALbasic NUG" <[email protected]> Sent: 1/14/2007 9:28 PM Subject: Re: Another reason to use PostgreSQL (wasRe: MySQL and RB (warning)) On Jan 13, 2007, at 11:12 PM, Daniel L. Taylor wrote: > I agree. A while back I decided that I would do my best to steer > future projects away from MySQL and to another DBMS, even in cases > where the client might be willing to pay the commercial fees. > > Something about the GPL movement really rubs me the wrong way. I > can understand restrictions to keep a library open and to insure > that any modifications to the library also become open and shared. > I can even understand requiring a commecial license where said open > library is used in a commercial product. > > But to purposely try to legally infect every code base touched by > the library in a vain attempt to push a world view makes me want to > slap someone. Taking it to the next level that mere communications > between a client and a server should "infect" the client via the > interface library, the subtle way that MySQL does, is just wrong. > "Viral" is too kind a word for GPL. Computer viruses are less > threatening than tricky contracts and lawyers. > > Maybe we'll get lucky and a widely used military system will be > found to use GPL code, at which point the world's governments will > pass legislation to make GPL illegal and unenforceable. That's how > low my opinion is of it. To be clear: my beef with MySQL is not at all with the GPL. There seems to be a good deal of misunderstanding of the GPL hereabouts lately. The GPL says that it is good when software is free. As countless projects have demonstrated, when literally everyone and anyone can contribute to a project, the result can be great software that anyone can use without cost. The only cost involved is that if you want to modify the software, you can't sell the results without also giving those results away. This seems fair enough to me: you're basing what you're doing on what a bunch of other people have done, and *they* are giving you *their* work on that same basis. We all must share, so that we all may benefit. Fair enough. I would also point out that It is unfair to criticize MySQL on the basis of their use of the GPL, because you can *also*, instead, use a commercial license. IANAL, but it may be that REAL has done a suitable deal for our use of the plugin, so that we will not fall under the GPL. This is a good question to ask, though. IANAL, but I believe you *can* criticize the form of the MySQL commercial license. For a start, it's very hard to work out under what circumstances you need to pay them (or at least, this was the case the last time I tried). But all of this is moot. My point was: there is a free database, not bound by the GPL, that is also technically superior to MySQL. So why use MySQL? FWIW, I think MySQL continues to get used because it has greater mind- and market-share. And I think it got to this point for two reasons: it had a commercial (and reasonably profitable) entity backing it, and it had a good Windows experience (until the latest major release, installing Postgres on Windows sucked -- but this has now been fixed). None of this is a good reason for *you* to continue using MySQL. That's all I'm saying. Regards, Guyren G Howe Relevant Logic LLC guyren-at-relevantlogic.com ~ http://relevantlogic.com REALbasic, PHP, Ruby/Rails, Python programming PostgreSQL, MySQL database design and consulting Technical writing and training _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html> _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
