Add a comment
Recently, there’s been some discussion on Slashdot regarding MySQL in the past few months, after MySQL (the company) was bought out by Sun Microsystems. MySQL (the company) has announced that they will be developing some proprietary add-ons to the backup capabilities of MySQL (the database) which will only be available to MySQL’s (the company’s) customers of MySQL (the database) enterprise edition, and not to MySQL (the database) community edition.
This has been blown a bit out of proportion. (The headline, on Slashdot, “Sun may begin close-sourcing MySQL” was misleading at best). We e-mailed Steve Curry at MySQL (the company) and he pointed us to some information clearing up the situation.
· Anything that has been released as open-source under GPL continues to be released as open-source under GPL. Sun and MySQL (the company) are not going to start “closing” the open-source MySQL (the database,) and it seems unlikely that they will be able to legally do so even if they wished to.
· Improved backup capabilities are being planned in MySQL (the database) 6.0 for both the open-source community and open-source with proprietary add-ons enterprise version.
· Proprietary add-ons are being added to the Enterprise version of MySQL (the database). These add-ons are not core critical, they are essentially added-value for paying customers, which add compression, encryption, specific native drivers – things that a particular business might need but which aren’t critical to the core functioning of MySQL (the database.)
· The decision to do so was done before MySQL (the company) was acquired by Sun Microsystems. If anything, Sun has been very open-source friendly, with Star Office forming the basis of OpenOffice.org, and Solaris and Java both open-source now.
· There is nothing preventing people from forking the MySQL (the database) source code and producing open-source versions of the proprietary capabilities.
The use of proprietary add-ons to an open-source system isn’t even all that rare. Click N’ Run for Linux systems adds proprietary software to the open-source Linux; MacOSX is based on the BSD-licensed Darwin, a BSD-like distribution.
We also note the irony of a number of proprietary Web applications running off of LAMP stacks, where the L, the A, the M (the DB) and the P are all “free software.”
There are a number of proprietary Web applications running with MySQL (the database) – and a move to “close source” MySQL (the database) would have messed with the business models of many companies – including NetQoS. NetQoS uses MySQL (the database) Enterprise edition in our network monitoring and reporting products and we’re customers of MySQL (the company). So we’re glad this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot.
I tried to think of a prominent case where someone successfully “closed the source” of a flagship product after it was open-sourced - but couldn't until I went much, much farther afield. There is a company “closing the source” on its major flagship product.
That company is Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro. And the flagship product is “Dungeons and Dragons.”
Wizards (the company) makes Dungeons and Dragons, a role-playing, computer-less tabletop game where you play knights, elves, and powerful wizards (the characters) – a game that has a history of being very attractive to the technology-oriented crowd because of our love of math and power fantasies.
What makes Dungeons and Dragons particularly interesting is that a while back, Wizards (the company) released an “Open Gaming License” (OGL) which allowed third parties to develop additional content for Dunegons and Dragons, and, in fact, create entirely new games in different settings and genres using the rules established in Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. If you were a third-party company, you could publish supplements to provide traps, monsters, or new spells for wizards (the characters) to cast. And many did.
This had numerous benefits all around; players needed to learn how to use only one system, and they had tons of D&D supplements to choose from, game companies found they had an audience in D&D players that they might not have otherwise had, Wizards (the company) found a sea of “developers” for their system which made ownership of D&D’s “core books” more valuable, and while it may not have resulted in a rebirth of the roleplaying game industry, it sure propped it up for a little while longer.
Because game players only had to learn one set of rules to play, the roleplaying game industry standardized quite a bit and the system used in Dungeons or Dragons (known as “d20”) became quite widely used, dominating the RPG field for a time.
D&D “version 4.0” will soon be released, and many game beta testers believe the system has been radically overhauled and improved. However, this new system will not be released under the OGL. It will however, be released under the “Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Game System License” (GSL).
The GSL license has not yet been made public, but there are rumors, speculations, and concerns, fueled by online posts made by the brand manager and licensing manager for Dungeons and Dragons, and relayed by the lead writer of third-party publisher Necromancer Games that the GSL will contain a “poison pill” clause – that is, in order to use the GSL, a game company must not publish anything under the OGL.
This would be like Microsoft saying that developers for Windows Vista are forbidden from publishing anything under the GNU public license. And the upshot is now that developers have to choose between not developing games with the improved system or destroying their back-catalogs.
Even if you don’t have a huge interest in D&D – in which case, I envy your normal social adjustment and relatively less awkward adolescence – it pays to keep up with this developing situation to see how a fight to close an open-source software product might actually go down. Will Hasbro fail in its efforts to dominate the RPG industry, either shrinking their portion of market share or shrinking the size of the entire market? Or will Hasbro succeed with this business plan, and the publishers of Monopoly (the game) end up with a de facto monopoly (the economic term) on this niche industry?
Update: On May 2, 2008, a week after this article's publication, Wizards of the Coast released an FAQ about the 4th edition licensing terms. The FAQ states:
Q. Can companies still produce 3.x products under the OGL?
Whether this FAQ was changed over the past week while WoTC remained silent or whether this was WoTC policy from the beginning is anybody's guess.
A. Yes, but we anticipate that interest in the 4e GSLs will be greater.
Q. Can publishers release new products under both the OGL and 4E GSL?
A. No. Each new product will be either OGL or 4E GSL. If a new product is published under the 4e GSL, it cannot also be published as 3.x product under the OGL; and vice versa.
Q. I have multiple product lines. If I update one product line to 4th Edition, do they all have to be updated?
A. No. Publishers are able to choose on a product line by product line basis which license will work best.
Q. Will there be a different license for other lines, such as d20 Modern?
A. The d20 GSL will allow for other genres of roleplaying games.
Q. Why are there two different licenses?
A. The D&D 4e GSL is specific to the Dungeons & Dragons brand. The d20 GSL allows for non-fantasy genres. Both licenses tie to the 4th edition rule set.
Q. Do I have to give up my right to publish 3.5 OGL products in order to publish 4e compatible products?
A. No. Publishers are free to print product lines under either the OGL or 4E GSL. We would love to see our industry colleagues convert their entire product offerings to 4E, as we are doing, but we do not expect or require entire companies to convert to the new edition.
Q. Can publishers update their previous publications from older editions to the D&D 4th Edition rules?
A. Yes. Publishers participating in the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition GSL will be allowed, and encouraged, to convert their publications from earlier editions to the 4th Edition rules.
 |
Comments
You might want to view the forum threads over at WOTC http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1019232 and http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1022832
The license has not been released yet and it *appears* that the 3rd party developer might have misunderstood the mutual exclusivity clause of the licenses. We will not know until the actual license has been released, so let's hold off on storming the castle until then, eh?
Posted by: mnichols | April 24, 2008 03:42 PM
The easy answer of course is just to just publish your open gaming license games under a different publishing company.
Posted by: Jen | April 24, 2008 04:28 PM
No matter how egregious the eventual 4e license is, it can't really be said to give Wizards/Hasbro a monopoly over anything, least of all the entire industry.
There are already numerous game systems out there that have nothing to do with d20, as well as at least one publisher (Paizo) staying with the OGL version of the rules and not adopting 4e at all.
Basically, this is (if true) an ill-conceived, ham-handed attempt by Wizards/Hasbro to force developers to move to 4e rather than continue lines based on the 3.5e mechanics. If I didn't know better (which I don't), I'd suspect they have specific companies in mind who they'd like to either shut out of 4e or force to move into the new system despite their reservations. It's also possible they rightly anticipate a much smaller impact from 4e than 3.0/3.5 received and are trying to use the threat of getting left behind to jump start a lot of product releases that will help make 4e's splash bigger.
Posted by: RudeMorgue | April 24, 2008 04:43 PM
Something tells me that no one's going to comment on the MySQL situation...
-- Brian Boyko
-- Editor, Network Performance Daily
Posted by: Brian Boyko | April 24, 2008 05:12 PM
Hey, since you can't copyright rules and since 3e is still open, you could just stick with OGL games...something like Pathfinder, perhaps?
Posted by: KM | April 24, 2008 05:35 PM
I'll comment on both...
I don't know what Sun's intentions towards mySQL are. But the Wizards situation is a cautionary tale for those who would rely too much on an open source license.
Let's say Sun did decide to start selling "SunSQL 1.0, $10,000/CPU," and stop distributing mySQL. If they wanted to, there's a lot of legal or semi-legal dirty tricks they could employ to quell the original mySQL.
Licensing terms. Add "you can't run mySQL on it" to Solaris licensing, heck, even Sun hardware licensing. Make all the mySQL coders working for Sun sign "noncompetes." Whoever still distributes it, hit them with cease & desists and frivolous legal action - Joe Open Source Guy can't afford the lawyer to contest it, and ISPs like to bend over when a company comes knocking. They could take out a trademark on the term "mySQL" and try to patent critical parts of the mySQL technology, and then use these to "overcome" open licensing. "Oh, it's open, but the patent use fee is high..." This wold work best if they planned it for a year or two so they could get everyone on the "newer, better" spiked versions.
Now, in the IT world it'd never work, even if Sun wanted it to, which is dubious. The FSF would step in and pay for lawyers, and the tech community is behind openness enough that the blowback would turn Sun into a company like SCO, a hollow shell pretending to sell things but really looking for "revenue by lawsuit."
Unfortunately in the gaming world, there's no white knight... Wizards owns most of the market and is backed by the wealthy and lawsuit-happy Hasbro (Scrabulous, RADGames, WizKids, etc). The only organizations are like GAMA, and Wizards controls too much of the money for them to even look at them funny.
Even when you have a contract saying you're in the right, the American legal system allows a rich bunghole to make a lot of trouble for you...
Posted by: Ernest Mueller | April 24, 2008 10:00 PM
As far as MySQL is concerned I don't think it would be good to see it go closed. It seems to be a big competitor for MSSQL, so that may be part of any decision to make any part of it closed. While currently a free version of MYSQL allows people to use databases without needing to pay for the MicroSoft or other versions, having it paid for only in a closed license means someone else WILL get money from it. But will those people using the free version actually pay for MYSQL rather than choosing another pay database?
Yes you hit a hornet's nest with a baseball bat when mentioning D&D and its new SGL. As you yourself saod, however, watching the things revolving around D&D GSL will give a lot of information about what a customer base feels about a shift like this.
Suppose that all MySQL went closed and everyone was ordered to destroy their existing free versions, such as some feel the D&D GSL means. What would those former (as they should have destroyed the previous version and discoutinue it) MySQL users feel about the move in regards to the future of the product?
Also D&D has many software component implications in the GSL, which may change with the new license versus the OGL. So they [MySQL & D&D] are not totally that far afield from each other.
Posted by: passerby | April 25, 2008 03:32 PM
D&D is too great and pure for this - they should've stuck with the cartoon...
Posted by: Katie | April 25, 2008 03:39 PM
Even though I disagree with the ideas of open source, and have never supported it (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html), I do not like to see them distorted into meaninglessness.
I suspect that this article errs in applying the term "open source" to previous versions of D&D. I suspect that the OGL does not come anywhere near satisfying the Open Source Definition. Does it allow others to publish modified versions of the D&D rules? I suspect it does not. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)
If the old version of the D&D rules were free (as in freedom), its replacement by a non-free version would be an outrage worth fighting. And we would be able to fight it by forking and improving the old version.
But if, as I suspect, the old version doesn't allow this, then it wasn't free (or open source) in the first place. It isn't like the GNU/Linux system, it is like Windows and MacOS, so it deserves our loyalty, appreciation or support as little as they do.
What would it mean if D&D 4 restricts the publishing of add-ons only to those that have not made add-ons to D&D 3? Well, imagine if Microsoft made a rule that developers cannot release software specifically for Windows Vista if they released software specifically for Windows XP. How would we respond?
We would point out that releasing software specifically for any non-free operating system is not a contribution to society. And that putting the users under the developer's power is precisely what makes non-free software a bad thing. The lesson from this would be to reject non-free software and replace it with free software.
The lesson about D&D should be to reject it and replace it with a _free_ gaming system. Perhaps one released under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).
Posted by: Richard Stallman | April 26, 2008 12:41 PM
Mr. Stallman. Please allow me to address some of your concerns.
RE: “I suspect that this article errs in applying the term "open source" to previous versions of D&D. I suspect that the OGL does not come anywhere near satisfying the Open Source Definition. Does it allow others to modified versions of the D&D rules? I think it does not. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)”
The OGL does allow others to modify the text describing the D&D rules, to build upon them. This has been done with games such as Paizo’s “Pathfinder,” which are slight modifications to the existing D&D 3.5 rules and has been nicknamed “D&D 3.75.” And Mongoose Publishing at one point created a “Pocket Player’s Guide” which was a text-only version of the D&D rules – analogous to compiling and redistributing the available source code.
The rules in D&D have also been used as the starting point to such games as “Mutants and Masterminds,” which is so significantly changed from the original D&D rules that it is now only loosely based upon them – what you might consider a fork of the project, if you will.
RE: "If the old version of the D&D rules were free (as in freedom), its replacement by a non-free version would be an outrage worth fighting. And we would be able to fight it by forking and improving the old version."
Indeed, many people believe that Paizo’s “Pathfinder” is already a successful “fork” of the project which would fulfill this requirement. And there are plenty of other games on the market who have released their work despite the fact that they were started from scratch.
RE: "The lesson about D&D should be to reject it and replace it with a _free_ gaming system. Perhaps one released under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL)."
The irony is that if games such as “Action!” and “Spirit of the Century” – both open OGL games, were released under another free license such as the GNU-FDL, they would not have these problems; however, within the pen-and-paper RPG industry, OGL was the standard, just as GNU is the standard in the software industry.
-- Brian Boyko
-- Editor, Network Performance Daily
Posted by: Brian Boyko | April 28, 2008 02:46 PM