[Mono-devel-list] ByteFX development

[Reggie Burnett]

Hello everyone

Sorry for not responding sooner.  I spent a good deal of the last two
weeks in Europe with precious little bandwidth and just never got around
to responding.

Obviously, the ByteFX code that was released as LGPL can be maintained
further by someone however I think there are several reasons why this
shouldn't happen.

1.  As I am now the .NET face for MySQL and the maintainer of MySQL
Connector/Net, I am in a position to maintain excellent compatibility
between the connector and the database.

2.  I intend to maintain compatibility between the connector and Mono
and intend to ship Mono binaries in certain packages.

3.  The connector now comes with a license exception that basically
allows it to be used in any one of a number of compatible open source
licenses.  I am not a lawyer, so anyone wanting to use this should
review the exception before proceeding.

4.  Very soon, versions of the connector will come out that fully
support the MySQL embedded server, SSL communications, Pocket PC, and
IDE designers.

5.  I really don't understand the issue with licensing.  As I
understand, if you are developing an open source application, then using
the connector costs you nothing.  If you are developing a commercial
application, then you must pay a license fee to MySQL.  Trying to avoid
paying this fee to a group of people (MySQL) who have worked so hard on
a set of products that you will now use to make you money is just not
the way to handle yourself.  If your commercial product does not make
enough money to cover this (very low) license fee, I might suggest that
you rethink either the product or the entire endeavor.  

On another topic, while I am confident of the skills of the Mono crowd,
it seems awkward to keep my companies name on a product that I am no
longer involved with.  It may lead to support requests coming to me for
work I have not done.  

-reggie


> -----Original Message-----
> From: mono-devel-list-admin at lists.ximian.com [mailto:mono-devel-list-
> admin at lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Miguel de Icaza
> Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 5:09 PM
> To: cmorgan at alum.wpi.edu
> Cc: Todd Berman; Rafael Teixeira; mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com
> Subject: Re: Re: [Mono-devel-list] ByteFX development
> 
> Hello,
> 
> > The naming isn't the most critical issue although someone pointed
out
> >  that ByteFX may be trademarked.
> >
> > I see the issue as one simplicity and organization.  For mono to
> >  present two MySQL interfaces, one that is from a 3rd party that is
no
> >  longer supported, and another integrated interface that is
deprecated
> >  in favor of the 3rd party seems confusing and disorganized on
mono's
> >  part.
> >
> > I'd rather have a single unsupported interface with a name that
> >  indicates that it is an integrated mono component. People would
know
> >  to talk to mono developers and they can assume correctly that the
code
> >  is in the mono repository.
> 
> That is a good point, but am still afraid of breaking code at this
point.
> 
> Why not start doing some bug fixing for now, while we talk in parallel
> to Reggie, and see if he has some suggestions on how we should
> proceed?  Maybe he does not mind us using ByteFX as the name of the
> upgraded library.
> 
> Miguel
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