post by jim vines
Pay-to-play fires up grassroots hoots
Less than two months into Sun Microsystems’ MySQL acquisition, Sun has succeeded in upsetting the grassroots types with plans to close off features to the community.
It’s emerged Sun may release extra data back-up features in the Enterprise Edition of the next version of MySQL, due in Q4, to paying enterprise subscribers only.
The move is seen by some as a betrayal of MySQL’s open source roots and, by others, as part of an evil master plan by Sun to commercialize open source development. Mickos strongly denied both accusations and claimed the decision was made before the Sun takeover.
This points out the difficulty with either making profit with open source or by businessmen or corporate mindset regarding open source. In theory the source is free, but services and add on’s are not.
Some 90 per cent of MySQL customers do not pay for the product.
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