re: mysql.org

[Thomas J Keller]

  Alright.  I have received Mr. Johnson's permission to share the email response
he made to me.  it is included herewith for informational purposes without
comment or prejudice:

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<NOTE:  personal opening comments removed for brevity>

mysql.org has not been publically announced and it will take
some time for it to become the thriving community it is destined
to be.  My hope is that rather than fighting it, you can join it
and be part of an even more vibrant mysql community.

It is disappointing that our friends from MySQL AB seem threatened 
by the creation of noncommercial site to promote mysql that they
jump in and announce it themselves to the world and claim they 
were not informed.  The facts are they were informed and invited 
to participate, their response is what you have read.

You mention specifically that you believe we have no right to the
domain name.  The facts are that we believe we have a right under 
an agreement that was signed by both Monty and David that provided
us with broad rights to mysql related names.  In fact we paid a
significant sum of money for the ability to use those names and
other items and that same agreement in fact required MySQL 
to be released under the GPL.  Now that MySQL AB has taken on 
venture capital funding and hired new management, they want to
ignore those agreements.

Your comments about us not participating in any meaninful fashion
in the open source community are disappointing because it means
NuSphere has not done a good job communicating its work, I believe 
we provide a significant service and have allowed many people who
otherwise could not use open source software to use it because of
our work on improving windows ports, integration of components,
and major features.  We contribute back fixes and improvements to
many open source communities including apache, perl, php and mysql.
Much of that work is available at no cost through downloads at our
website.  I'd invite you to download and try NuSphere MySQL and 
see an example of what we have done.

The importance of our investment is reflected in Monty's own words:
"NuSphere has identified a very important technical enhancement 
needed to transform MySQL into an enterprise-enabled database capable 
of competing with commercial heavyweights," said Michael "Monty" 
Widenius, chief technology officer of MySQL AB. "In MySQL's five-year 
history, this is the most significant contribution from a source 
outside MySQL AB that has ever occurred."

We also support the community by sponsoring and helping organize
events such as the OSCON 2001 with O'Reilly, Open Source Database 
Summit with OSDN, and the Linux Legacy through Geek Cruises to name
a few.  We are proud of the significant investment we make in these 
areas so that the open source community can meet and learn from each 
other face to face.

As we said last January, we planned on Gemini being released
under an open source license as part of the launch of MySQL 4.0,
but that release has not shipped so we have decided to release
the source through mysql.org instead soon after its launch (the
community needs to setup CVS to support that effort).  Note that 
Gemini has both commercial and open source licenses just like 
MySQL itself and the products we are currently shipping are 
provided with a commercial license of Gemini.  We absolutely
believe we have the right to do this.

In closing, I hope you will take a moment to see things from our
perspective and understand that we want a strong mysql community
as strong as apache or php and one that is not controlled by a
single commercial company.

Thanks for your time,

Britt...
-- 

D. Britton Johnston       603-578-6707 Nashua
Chief Technology Officer  781-280-4954 Bedford
NuSphere Corporation      781-280-4600 Main
14 Oak Park               781-280-4646 Fax
Bedford, MA 01730         www.nusphere.com

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