RE: Oracle buying Sun...

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-
bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Scott Klement
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 2:03 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Oracle buying Sun...

While it may be legally possible for Oracle to introduce a lawsuit over
the name, I don't think it would make sense from a PR point of view.
There are MILLIONS of MySQL installations. Attempting to kill the open
source project by lawsuits over the name would be a public relations
nightmare.

James Rich is absolutely right. The GNU license guarantees our right to
the software as open source, and Oracle can't do anything about it. The
best they can do is drop support for it, and hope that the community
support dries up.

This is the power of Open Source -- and I've been trying to tell you
guys (midrange-l) this for years -- Open source is NOT the same thing as
freeware. Even if the maintainers don't want to maintain it anymore, or
it becomes commercially unprofitable, they CAN'T take it away from you.
The community has the right to take it over, maintain it, and
distribute it whenever they choose.

Open Source is a good thing for business, because you are never at the
mercy of another company.

Walden H. Leverich wrote:

So at best you could distribute "The database formerly known as
MySQL", and even that would probably get the Oracle lawyers on your
case.

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