Robert McMillan of IDG News Service writes: “A looming deadline following a dispute between two prominent open-source developers has forced database vendor MySQL AB to consider a change to the way it develops its software, and will also force scores of other open-source projects to consider a similar move within the month.

Open-source projects that have been able to freely use the BitKeeper source-code management software since 2002 have until July 1st to either begin paying license fees or stop using the software.

BitKeeper is used by more than 100 open source projects including MySQL, the Xen virtual machine monitor, and the ReiserFS journaling filesystem. Originally developed to as a way to make Linux kernel leader Linus Torvalds more productive as he managed the thousands of source code contributions being made to his project, the software is now the flagship product of a small South San Francisco company called BitMover Inc.”

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