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posted by martyb on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the making-a-buck-developing-free-software dept.

InfoWorld reports

MariaDB Corp. has announced that release 2.0 of its MaxScale database proxy software is henceforth no longer open source. The organization has made it source-available under a proprietary license that promises each release will eventually become open source once it's out of date.

MaxScale is at the pinnacle of MariaDB Corp.'s monetization strategy--it's the key to deploying MariaDB databases at scale. The thinking seems to be that making it mandatory to pay for a license will extract top dollar from deep-pocketed corporations that might otherwise try to use it free of charge. This seems odd for a company built on MariaDB, which was originally created to liberate MySQL from the clutches of Oracle.

The license in question, the Business Source License, was devised by MySQL creator Michael "Monty" Widenius in 2013. It allows use for evaluation and sets a date when the source code will be placed under the GPL, but it's explicitly proprietary in pursuit of commercial ends.

Monty blogs

Here is a statement from a large software company when I asked them to support MariaDB development with financial support:

As you may remember, we're a fairly traditional and conservative company. A donation from us would require feature work in exchange for the donation. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a feature that I would want developed that we would be willing to pay for this year.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @09:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @09:37AM (#391538)

    GPL restricts your rights to source code you write

    If you chose existing GPL code to modify, you knew the rules going in.
    Don't like the rules? Don't start modifying the code.

    It would be less deceptive of you to say that GPL restricts your rights to screw over others who have added code to the project under the understanding that the user always comes first.

    Don't like the GPL?
    Write your own code from scratch and release it under your choice of license.
    ...but don't assume that you can sponge off of other devs whose top value is freedom for the user.

    copyleft

    ...which leaves copyright in place and adds MORE rights for the user.
    Again, you can always build your codebase from scratch without leeching off of anyone else's work.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]