SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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it source-available under a proprietary license that promises each release will eventually become open source once it's out of date.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: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday August 22 2016, @03:32PM
Sounds like the build chain for a previous job. "If you can take the source and figure out how to build it... you're hired!"
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday August 23 2016, @07:56AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:14PM
It is somewhat ironic that a continuous integration product has a obfuscated build chain.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh