IBM to Release Java Database to Open-Source Group - ' Page Two ' (
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Charlie Garry, senior program director of database research for the Meta Group Inc., said that the move was particularly interesting in terms of licensing. Handing it over to Apache is a much more hands-off move than what Computer Associates Inc. did in terms of custom-licensing its recently open-sourced Ingres database, for example, and differs from MySQLs modified GPL license, which basically dictates that projects written on top of MySQL either be open source or that developers pay for a full license.
CA will release the code for its Ingres relational database at LinuxWorld. Read more here.
"[Thats] quite different in terms of a statement of support for open source coming from IBM than even what CA has done with Ingres or even what MySQL has done," said Garry, in Simsbury, Conn. "[Apache is] a pure support model. Their hope is it becomes a ubiquitous standard in the types of embedded applications it would be appropriate for, and theyll make some money on support of it. Which is better than what theyre making now, which is nothing.
"Its in stark contrast to what MySQL has done," he said. "Theyre increasingly becoming much more commercial. Its all or nothing with them. For a great many companies, thats unacceptable. [MySQL] continuously has to backpedal and issue [license] exceptions and so forth. I just think ultimately the GPL license is going to prove too restrictive as this market gets competitive."
Cloudscape is embedded in some 70 IBM applications, including Workplace, WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Application Server. It has a 2MB footprint and is fully transactional, fully embeddable and requires no database administration support.
IBM plans to release a commercial version of Cloudscape to partners and customers later this year. It will be based on the same technology as the Apache code and will be updated with changes brought forth by the development community.
IBM has made a binary copy of Derby available at www.developerworks.com. Over the coming weeks, the code will be downloadable from Apache.org.
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