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Matthew Miller wrote:
> Sproaticus <jsproat@io.com> wrote:
> > I don't understand why they offer a GPL for all platforms but one. Are they
> > trying to subsidise the cost of their Win32 compiler? Do they feel that they
> > -- as an application developer -- can knock me off the OS I choose? It seems
> > so...spiteful.
> Alternately, it might be that they're chosing to make it for sale for the
> platform with the most mass-market potential, and for techie niche
> platforms, give it away, which won't hurt their bottom line much, but will
> increase their geek cred. This is what Corel is doing, and it seems to be
> working for them.
You are pretty close to the mark. Here's some snippets from what I heard back
from the licensing guys at MySQL:
Michael Widenius wrote:
> The problem is that as Microsoft Windows is a highly commercial OS
> with very high development costs we see no other alternative
> than only give MySQL Windows version to paying customers.
>
> As we must get some revenue to be able to continue to develop MySQL on
> Win95 we will for the time being only give MySQL for Win32 to
> registered users, users that has helped us with the MySQL project
> in some way or users that think that they can contribute to the MySQL
> project
>
> In effect we let users that run a commercial OS (Win95/Win98/NT) pay for the
> development of tools for free OS (like Linux),
That last paragraph is pretty interesting -- theyopenly admit they're using
the sales of the Win32 version to pay for the Linux stuff. I wonder which
user base is larger...?
More from MySQL:
Michael Widenius wrote:
> Another reason why we have to charge for the windows version is that
> we haven't been able to find a single developer that wants to work on
> windows! Those that do, charges us twice as much for windows
> development than for Unix development.
This makes more sense to me, from a business standpoint. It also tells me I
need to start charging more than slave wages to write Win32 code! :-P
I already have an MS Access license, which I'm not a big fan of, but it's the
most available thing to me today. I could probably wrangle an Novell NDS
license instead and LDAP into it, but that would be an interesting exercise
for just a questionaire app... hmmm...
> (Note that I'm not saying that Linux, etc., are going to remain niche
> platforms forever. Just that they're mostly that way today.)
And why not? I plan to have my Atari ST up and running on the desk between my
Linux machine and my Amiga... (grinning, ducking, and running)
Cheers,
- jsproat
--
Jeremy H. Sproat <jsproat@io.com> ~~~ http://www.io.com/~jsproat/
Jeremy: "Hi, My name is Jeremy Sproat, and I'm a...Slashdot Lemming."
All: "Hi, Jeremy."
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: web surveys
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| (...) Alternately, it might be that they're chosing to make it for sale for the platform with the most mass-market potential, and for techie niche platforms, give it away, which won't hurt their bottom line much, but will increase their geek cred. (...) (25 years ago, 8-Oct-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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