Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Intellectual Property Law Blogs -> Groklaw

Intellectual Property Law

: Groklaw

On Selling Exceptions to the GNU GPL - Stallman Clarifies

By Pamela Jones et al.

Richard Stallman has clarified his earlier letter regarding MySQL. I had brought to his attention the claims Monty Widenius is making, implying that Stallman supports his petition campaign to "Save MySQL":

Richard Stallman agrees that it's very important which company owns MySQL, that Oracle should not be allowed to buy it under present terms and that it can't just be taken care of by a community of volunteers. http://keionline.org/ec-mysql

That last part is not true. So here are the salient paragraphs in Stallman's new article:

As the following article explains, my feelings about selling license exceptions are mixed. Clearly it is possible to develop powerful and complex software packages under the GNU GPL without selling exceptions, and we do this. MySQL can be developed this way too....

One thing that makes no sense at all is the idea of changing the license of MySQL to something non-copyleft. That would eliminate the possibility of selling exceptions, but allow all sorts of proprietary modified versions. Wherever MySQL should go, it isn't there....

We must distinguish the practice of selling exceptions from something crucially different: proprietary extensions or proprietary versions of a free program. These two activities, even if practiced simultaneously by one company, are different issues. In selling exceptions, the same code that the exception applies to is available to the general public as free software. An extension or a modified version that is only available under a proprietary license is proprietary software, pure and simple, and no better than any other proprietary software. This article is concerned with cases that involve strictly and only the sale of exceptions.

As you can see, he believes the GPL is sufficient, that the community can develop powerful programs with the license, and that there is an important difference between the GPL plus exceptions and changing to an Apache license, which is what Monty has been suggesting. So if you see further FUD from Monty about the GPL or how rms allegedly agrees that the GPL is insufficient, here is your rebuttal.

Full post as published by Groklaw on January 08, 2010 (boomark / email).