Brian Aker debates with Richard Stallman

At foss.my 2009, Brian Aker asked Richard Stallman at his keynote, about the Oracle/Sun acquisition (with a focus on MySQL), with regards to the parallel licensing approach used by MySQL. Brian was referring to:

As only the original rights holder can sell commercial licenses, no new forked version of the code will have the ability to practice the parallel licensing approach, and will not easily generate the resources to support continued development of the MySQL platform.

from Richard’s Letter to the EC opposing Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL. Listen to the discussion between Brian and Richard.



11 Comments

  1. Ben Scherrey says:

    RMS demonstrating that everything is about him so he feels justified in attacking people personally – still. He can't comprehend a principled opinion that isn't lock step in agreement with his.

  2. paul omondi says:

    Richard should learn to listen and then answer without any emotional hang-ups… I asked him a couple of question too at that sitting but was unable to get relevant answers. He just feels like he is personally being attacked for his opinions. Myself i don't care about him I was just interested in understanding his philosophy.

  3. boogybo says:

    Wow.. just wow

  4. erkules says:

    Hmm I see no need for RMS-bashing.
    From first approach he was trying to tell, that dual-licencing with GPL ist better (more free) than (dual-)licencing with X11 or a BSD-licence.
    Coming up with Oracle as the new copyrightowner is (the intended question?) made the “discussion” like a hustle.
    It would be great if RMS had managed to make clear why – even if dual licence is better than no/bsd-dual-licence he is against Oracle.
    And also tell the benefit we still have MySQL is GPL. Coze the fact, that MySQL is still GPL counts. He should have stayed cool and first say what we still have got – because of GPL – even if Oracle buys the Copyright of MySQL :-)

    The topic should have been: Can I make money with GPL-only? Which I agree.

    Other Topics like i.e. RMS want MySQL GPLv2 (instead of GPLv2 only) and later (so GPLv3) too and he will never gonna get this if the Copyrightowner says no is another question. They shouldn't be mixed. Even if there are good topics.

  5. Mihai says:

    Monty explains why dual licensing is required to keep mysql alive and in order for the big companies to use it http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/10/importan

  6. […] Colin Charles Agenda A permanent record for what’s interesting today – this is my live journal      « Brian Aker debates with Richard Stallman […]

  7. […] as a software hippie can take us to different, greater heights. Do not confuse yourself with the debate between RMS and Brian Aker of Drizzle. Brian Aker already made millions by working on Open Source projects (aka MySQL) and RMS have […]

  8. […] I was too busy dreaming. Colin posted videos of the ‘discussions’ between RMS and Brian Aker and Harish Pillay. Pretty interesting even if you don’t know what is going […]

  9. henrik says:

    Thanks, both Brian and Colin.

    So much for “Richard was tricked into this by Microsoft” :-)

  10. […] Brian Aker debates with Richard Stallman At foss.my 2009, Brian Aker asked Richard Stallman at his keynote, about the Oracle/Sun acquisition (with a focus on MySQL), with regards to the parallel licensing approach used by MySQL. […]


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