Open Source Hypocrisy

Ok, so MySQL.com moves their enterprise tarballs to the paid-only enterprise downloads section on the site, and makes a few other changes.

Pandemonium.

Now, is this reaction really justified, or just a whole lotta whooey? (Thanks Eben)

The Register’s Developer section has a good overview, and MySQL’s own Kaj Arnö explains on his own blog.

*spacemonkey pats himself on the back for remembering the HTML entity for that last letter in Kaj’s last name

Gavin Clarke hits the nail on the head in the Register article when he says:

“There is concern that restricted access to source will harm the quality of the final product while leaving the community straddled with a second-class database that slips out of touch with MySQL’s development cycles.”

This was the same concern many had with RedHat when they split RedHat Linux into Fedora and RedHat Enterprise. Personally, I couldn’t keep up with the pace of Fedora (seemed I needed to erase all my machines and start over every 6 months) so I switched all my servers to Debian. Problem solved. :-)

Maybe the better question here is this:

Can an open source project be solely sponsored by a corporate entity that’s sole means of income is based on that project?

Something tells me this is a lot harder balance to find than is commonly believed. In fact I suspect it’s just not really a combination that will work, like oil and water.

PostgreSQL is another FOSS database that instead of having only one corporate sponsor, has many. The biggest sponsors seem to have no commercial interest in the project, as they use the technology internally. Of course this seems to be a much more optimal scenario, but how can other FOSS projects find that balance? Or is corporate sponsorship just a bad idea for FOSS?