On Selling Exceptions to the GNU GPL

“The practice of selling license exceptions became a hot topic
when I co-signed Knowledge Ecology International’s letter warning
that Oracle’s purchase of MySQL (plus the rest of Sun) might not be
good for MySQL.

“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. However, selling exceptions has been used by MySQL developers.
Who should decide whether to continue this? I don’t think it is
wise to give major decisions about a free software project to a
large proprietary competitor, which might naturally prefer that the
project develop less rather than more.

“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.”

The LWN
discussion has some good comments– ed.

Complete
Story