InfoWorld: Open Source Lock-In

“With the release of MySQL 4.0, the licensing policy of the
wildly popular open source database underwent a subtle change. The
code libraries that client programs use to access the native MySQL
API, formerly licensed under the LGPL (Lesser General Public
License), were converted to the GPL. The LGPL was designed to
exempt ‘nonfree’ programs that link against open source libraries
from the GPL’s strong requirement to release source code. The
purpose of the LGPL, according to the Free Software Foundation, is
‘to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that
it becomes a de-facto standard.’ And indeed, MySQL has become the
database pillar of the so-called LAMP platform, whose acronym
expands to Linux, Apache, MySQL, and the trio of Perl, Python, and
PHP.

“Ongoing controversy has dogged the switch from LGPL to GPL.
Last week, OpenLink Software CEO Kingsley Idehen posted angry note
on his Weblog in which he denounced the move, saying in part: ‘Nice
way to treat a community that has built itself around MySQL’s LGPL
client libraries.’ And he offered a workaround: an open source
gateway that maps the MySQL-specific API to the database-neutral
ODBC API…”

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