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cc-bizcom - Re: [Cc-bizcom] comments from Zack

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Subject: A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

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  • From: Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: cc-bizcom AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Cc-bizcom] comments from Zack
  • Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 10:04:51 -0700

Rob Myers wrote:
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is how Open Source made MySQL
commercially viable. I certainly wouldn't have started selling a new
> database at the moment when Oracle and Microsoft were consolidating
> their stranglehold on the market in the late-1990s. Without Open
> Source, MySQL would not have got the mindshare, exposure and community
> of users required to make it commercially successful.

In this case there's even a counterfactual: in the mid-90's mSQL (free as in beer for most purposes, source available) was popular for low-end web apps on unix. Hughes Consulting of Australia (the mSQL vendor, IIRC, I'm offline at the moment) didn't want to open source mSQL, and over a very brief time (~1996) saw their share killed by MySQL. Now MySQL is a thriving business.

I like PostgreSQL better, and it appears to have corporate-financed development with a non-copyleft (BSD-like) license, but that's another story that I don't know much about.

--
Mike Linksvayer
http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people#21





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