Matthew Aslett is reporting on MySQL's mostly unnoticed licensing change. As he notes, it's not really a change, so much as putting a stake in the ground to keep MySQL on GPLv2 for the future. As Kaj (VP of Community for MySQL) notes on his blog:

MySQL has today refined its licensing scheme from “GPLv2 or later” to “GPLv2 only“, in order to make it an option, not an obligation for the company to move to GPLv3.

Specifically, this means that copyright notice in the MySQL source code files will change from referring to “either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version” to “version 2” only, in the MySQL 5.0 and MySQL 5.1 code bases.

This is not a once-and-for-all decision, but rather gives MySQL breathing room to wait …

Ismael at IT Redux claims an 83% success rate on his 2006 predictions and I like his picks for 2007. Besides the love for Mule, his notion that "the first Open Source database vendor (EnterpriseDB, Ingres, or MySQL) to release a plug-compatible replacement for the Oracle database that can support the SAP R/3 applications for over 10,000 concurrent users will get the best home run in database history since Sybase" is dead on. The legacy burden of SAP is monstrous. The OSS vendors that figure out how to make things work with SAP (in addition to trying to displace it) have a huge market opportunity.

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I'm still plowing through Richardson's biography of William James, and came across a comment on Hegel that really struck me. Hegel, in a gross oversimplification, believed that history is a series of conflicts, directed by the Geist (spirit) inentrixably toward freedom - thesis, antithesis, synthesis. All conflicts lead toward a positive end of global freedom. As Hegel wrote, "The history of the world [Zeitgeist] is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom."

Very nice. What's not to like?

Much, if you're William James. The problem with seeing all conflict as mere disagreements that lead us ever onward toward freedom is that, unfortunately, …

As 2006 nears its close, Dave and I decided to try to do a "Year in Review" sort of post or two. You can find Dave's here.

This has been an exceptional year for open source (and for me, personally, though Arsenal didn't contribute much to that). I was with Alfresco all year, as well as the advisory boards for SugarCRM, JasperSoft, Specifix, MuleSource (sort of - still waiting for my paperwork, Dave :-), Intoto, and Bungee Labs, as well as the board of OSI and the Open Source Business Conference. These gave me a bird's eye view into different sectors of the industry, so as to separate hype from reality in open source.

Guess what? All signs are positive for open source, no …

I just received great news today. Eben Moglen has agreed to keynote the conference. He joins Matthew Szulik (CEO, Red Hat), Marc West (CIO, H&R Block), Marten Mickos (CEO, MySQL), and one other IT executive (that I can't name just yet) as our distinguished keynotes for the conference. If you haven't heard Eben speak, you're in for a treat. He is masterful, and will seriously challenge a lot of conventional thinking about what "open source" means, and how freedom contributes to capital.

This complements a speaking faculty that also includes senior IT executives from Activision, AIG, Bank of America, Davis Polk Wardwell LLP, US Department of Defense, E*Trade, H&R Block, and others, as well as senior executives from leading industry players like MySQL, Alfresco, SugarCRM, Oracle, Microsoft, DLA Piper Rudnick Gray & Cary, Intel, Olliance Group, Red Hat, Matrix Partners, Mayfield Fund, and a range of others.

This is, hands down, …

Version 1.1.3 of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL, an enterprise solution for backup and recovery of MySQL databases is available for download at Zmanda downloads page.

Changes since 1.1.2 release:
* Supports Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) release
* Works with MySQL enterprise 5.0
* User configuration for custom plugins
* Bug fixes

Documentation is available in ZRM for MySQL wiki. Please use forums to provide feedback on the release.

Thanks to all users for providing valuable feedback as well as finding bugs in earlier
releases

Last month, Paddy gave a great webinar on ZRM for MySQL. The playback is available as part of documentation in Zmanda Network, at no cost. You can register to Zmanda Network here. As a follow-up, we will be hosting a very hands on webinar on configuring ZRM for MySQL this Thursday, the 14th of Decemeber at 10.00 am PST. You can register for this webinar here.

I'm flying back from Alfresco's quarterly management meeting, and looking through some of the data shared by the team. We're just one company in a rising tide of open source companies, so I'm not sure how much to infer from our numbers about open source, generally, but I thought I'd share, anyway. Perhaps the data will be useful for you, too, as you plan your own open source business.

A few points:

1. Lead Generation. Alfresco's website (Downloads/product trials) drives 72% of our leads, and documentation drives another 21%. Cold calls from sales people, direct mail, email, Google Adwords, and other sources you might imagine...almost nothing. To be fair, we don't really do direct mail or email campaigns yet, so it's not surprising that these bring in few leads.

   But we found (as SugarCRM and MySQL found before us) that PR, which leads to visits to our website …

Digital music sales seem to have peaked, as Nick Carr highlights on his blog, and as the WSJ recently reported. [Subscription required.] For this reason, EMI is beginning to experiment with non-DRM protected music files: MP3s.

For many in the music business, the sky is about to fall. Or so they think. "Why will anyone buy our wares if we don't force them to do so by preventing copying?!?"

What they don't realize is that the people who don't buy from them won't buy from them, DRM or no. The people that aren't thieves (and that's most of us) will, but convenience of purchase is key. I don't buy from iTunes because I can't get the files elsewhere. I buy from iTunes because it's a safe, super-convenient experience …

These companies have fought long, hard battles to get Open Source into the corporate data centers.  It was an uphill battle, requiring education on a concept new to many people.  They couldn’t just blaze a path for themselves, they had to prove an entire business model; explain its viability, its resulting products, and value.  The developers and executives at these companies fought a hard, honest war and have established a beach head.

The Marines have blazed the trail.  No mucking around with convincing a CIO that “not just anyone can update their source automatically” and that Open Source companies can generate real value, revenue with a product you COULD …