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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it source-available under a proprietary license that promises each release will eventually become open source once it's out of date.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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 22 2016, @12:59PM
Hendrik's explanation and the Moslems themselves tapdance around it but its just small scale western style financial market financing. Unlike the west where you need to pay $250K/yr to be permitted to try to raise funds on the NYSE, the Moslems are willing to contract the same style of financial deal with like, one dude running one gas station.
Another option I've seen related to Hendrik's is the bank basically buys in as a capital providing silent partner. The corporation owns the gas station, the corporation is mostly owned by the bank, the human partner can buy out the bank partner if he's successful over time, or maybe not. This is basically the western VC model although you're not required to live in SV and the business is not required to be ".... on the internet" bubble variety.
They also work the gift economy very hard, its not illegal under Islam under most interpretations to pay interest as a depositor or lender as long as its not guaranteed and totally voluntary. Technically any deposit or loan can earn 0% interest ONE TIME but the odds of you or anyone in your extended family being offered service in the future will be, um, reduced a bit if you insist paying zero or insultingly low "gift" aka interest. You can get a 0% mortgage or loan, but you better pay a voluntary gift or you and your family will never do business again with that bank (and anyone the banker talks to, and they like to talk...)
Nobody mentioned yet that Islamic finance has the usual Sharia limitation, no financing for a pig farm or pr0n websites or liquor stores or whatever.
A surprising amount of Islamic finance boils down to "we does microfinance" and "long term personal relationships matter in business deals" and aside from the usual side helping of our arbitrary and random laws are different than your arbitrary and random laws, pretty much everything in Islamic finance follows from those two main ideas.
Islamic finance is pretty interesting. Like all big things, there's parts of Islam that suck, like, say, their attitude toward women or their lack of even trying to self police their terrorist extremists before they shoot up gay nightclubs. But big things always have parts that are cool and parts that suck, and Islamic finance is part of the cool. And explosively growing BTW. Like 20% annual growth rates over the last decade and its now getting up to a percent or two of the global financial world. Its gonna be a very big deal when my kids are my age, for example.
For a good time, always follow the money. When some rich Jewish financier in London starts complaining about the Evils of Sharia Law he's not really complaining about stoning gays or no bacon on sale in supermarkets anymore, he's complaining about Moslems doing banking with Moslems and he's pretty butthurt than they're cutting his tribe out of the deals and/or his western corporation out of the deals. Now when a normal person off the street complains about invaders its because they're raping the local women with impunity because they know they won't be punished, I'm talking about the usual corporate elites talking about corporate priorities on corporate TV.