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MicroBSD Is No More
TrumpetPower! writes "Recently there's been quite a row in the OpenBSD community over copyright infringement by the OpenBSD spinoff, MicroBSD. Many parts of MicroBSD would seem to be a wholesale search-n-replace of the two names...including copyright notices. As a result, MicroBSD has shut down. It's worth noting that, as of this story submission, the MicroBSD Web site is still up and running with no special notices."
After reading the various links given, it looks to me like the MicroBSD guys had an idea, started working on it, one of their developers screwed up and changed come copyright info, people complained, the project wasn't going anywhere anyways, so it just stopped. Didn't look like there was willfull copyright infringment, and I'd like to believe that it really would have been fixed, like the micro guys said.
Don't attribute to malice what stupidity can explain (or whatever the exact quote is.)
That is the core of the BSD license, as long as you give credit where it is due ,you can do what you want with the code, including selling it.
So this doesn't really make since as a valid reason alone.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There is fairly good circumstantial proof that it was intentional because of examples like:
Actually, these examples all seem like proof that it was unintentional.
Think about it. You want to fork a project, one of the first things you do is change the name. The simplest way to do that is with "s/OpenBSD/MicroBSD/g" - but oops, you forgot that this would also change all of the copyright notices.
This would explain every single one of your examples (case-sensitivity in the web and email addresses, and it wouldn't change any graphics, but it would change the alt-tag.)
It certainly seems unintentional to me. If they really had intended to breach copyright, wouldn't they have changed every text instance, and deleted stuff they couldn't change easily (like the OpenBSD logo)?
I don't know what people were complaining about USB or why (probably the usual trolls), but so many people against winmodems because of legitimate reasons--I think so anyway.
This caused a very anti-winmodem sentiment in much of the Linux community. I remember one guy announced he was trying to create a windmodem driver. He got flamed bigtime for it too. I didn't see why any anti-winmodem people should care if someone tried to write a driver, but they were'nt just "winmodems suck" posts, many of them were more like "proprietary winmodems are against free software." I wouldn't be surprised if RMS himself didn't make some anti-winmodem announcement somewhere...
Yeh OK so maybe there was a bunch of search & replace but christ everyone needs to start SOMEWHERE.
Sure maybe someone did search and replace so they accidently replaced the copyright, maybe someone modified the copyright - what you need to realise is that there were many people with CVS commit and access and the founders probably didnt even look at the notices to check.
Its also notable that alot of openbsd stuff is in there so they havent just done a mass search and replace rebadge and re-release.
Obviously a rather fierce reaction was launched against the project to force them to act so abruptly, I don't see the problem with a polite "Excuse me you violated our copyright please fix it or we will XYZ" you should also reliase this is the open source community and events like this just shunt the initiative and creativity of people which shows a complete lack of maturity and disregard for the principles of open source and free software. It seems to be as if they were given no chance or time to fix the violations that existed and correct everything and felt forced to go away. Shame on anyone involved with that. You just crushed someone's dream.
To everyone in the MicroBSD IRC channel and all the developers regardless i wish you the best you were a great bunch of guys to hang with while it lasted and we'll chat again some time, i bet on it.
Here's an example. After using Linux for several years, I gave FreeBSD a try and was very impressed by the solid kernel and coherent userland. There were a few things I couldn't fathom out though, like getting USB joysticks working, and asking on the mailing lists or similar forums always got the same kind of responses: "Go back to Linux if you want that", "FreeBSD is brill and doesn't need to support it" etc.
It's this zealotry, patronising attitude and belief that FreeBSD is the "one true OS" that is really damaging its acceptance.
Golly, now perhaps you understand what longtime Windows users are made to feel like when they ask similar questions of the Linux community!
A taste of one's own medicine, I'd say.
Reputation is not free. It is "costly" to aquire (sometimes even financially) and devilishly difficult to maintain.
This very instance may serve as a case in point of the latter.
KFG
I don't have any specific information, so the following is conjecture, but I'd call it educated because of other situations that have arisen around OpenBSD and development for it. Theo DeRaadt is a really brilliant guy but he should probably have someone around to make him count to 10 when stuff like this happens. As with the ipfilter, pf fiasco earlier, this is probably a case of somebody's ego getting bruised. Sure, the MicroBSD guys were totally ripping off OpenBSD, but why should the Open people care? They're not making any money off of it. Is it a lame thing to do? Yes. And it seems that Micro never really went anywhere, but say that they had developed just one or two nice features that they had released under a BSD license (as they probably would have). That's a net gain for the BSD community, which should be priority #1 for anyone who considers themselves a member of that community. If you want glory and money, go write code for a commercial concern.
As with the afore-mentioned pf/ipfilter thing. Sure, pf is great and the community came together to create it, but what if people had just kept their heads about them, checked their egos at the door and backed off? Then, instead of having a bunch of coders working to replace functionality that ALREADY EXISTED in the product, they could have been forging ahead in new territory, making OpenBSD capable of doing yet another thing.
That's the problem with the whole world. Everybody wants credit and accolades. How about just keeping your mouth shut and solving the damn problem.
Ya, and I have never heard of an Estes Rocket launching a satelite, nor have I heard of an Atlas Rocket doing so while still under construction.