Richard Stallman raised more than a few eyebrows when he signed the letter objecting to the MySQL purchase. Endorsing, or seeming to endorse, the practice of selling proprietary exceptions to GPL'ed software seemed entirely out of character with Stallman's comments on Free Software up to that point.

Richard Stallman has clarified his earlier letter regarding MySQL.

Richard Stallman's willingness to accept the sale of exceptions to the GNU General Public License intrigues me. What intrigues me is not his acceptance of the idea. Rather, what fascinates me is how many people are reacting as if his comments are something new.

There are various reasons when we have to wrap java exceptions. Often those reasons are called: Checked Exceptions. According to the definition there are 2 types of exceptions:

According to a post on the MySQL blog site last night, by MySQL's Vice President for Community Kaj Arno, Sun Microsystems plans to purchase MySQL AB, the commercial firm selling enterprise database products built atop the ubiquitous open source database which represents the M in the LAMP open source software stack.

RMS: Companies that develop free software and release it under the GNU GPL sometimes distribute some copies of the code in other ways. If they distribute the exact same code under a different license to certain users that pay for this, typically permitting including the code in proprietary programs, we call it "selling exceptions".

Stark law exceptions were intended to remove barriers to Health IT adoption, allowing hospitals to pay for hardware and software for Physicians.

Following on from MySQL founder Monty Widenius, Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, and non-profit organisations Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and the Open Rights Group (ORG) have advised European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes not to grant approval for Oracle's takeover of MySQL.

The question "Oracle good, or Oracle bad, for MySQL?" was generally met with a smile first, then a measured, thoughtful response on the final day of the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara. The responses were interesting, to say the least, ranging from an absolute "No way" to equally absolute "Yes, it will be great for MySQL," and lots of answers somewhere in between.