Interview with NetBSD Developer Hubert Feyrer

An anonymous reader writes "The NetBSD-PT User Group did an interview via e-mail with Hubert Feyrer. He has been a NetBSD developer for years and we wanted to know his views on NetBSD, his projects and some personal questions. He talks about the origin of pkgsrc and the g4u - g4l issue."

Comments

g4u/g4l for the lazy.

[FooAtWFU]

tfa sez:
"g4u is a single floppy that contains a NetBSD kernel with a RAM disk . . . which can upload the whole harddisk (or only partitions) to a FTP server, and restore it later on.

...<snip>...

I had an unpleasant encounter with some people from the "g4l" project recently, which copied my (g4u) code, removed both my name and the license (BSD) I put g4u under, and re-distributed it under their own license (GPL). "

He subsequently links to http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4l.html for an analysis of this infringement.

Re:g4u/g4l for the lazy.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a clueless idiot.

You CAN'T relicense any code, except the one you wrote.
You can do what you want with the code under the BSD license (that's because BSD people aren't communists, they value liberty) but of course you can't relicense it or take the credit for it.

The big and evil corporations *include* BSD code in their products, they don't (they *can't*) relicense it or take credit for it.

Nobody can "close up" BSD code: it will always be available for any use, because BSD code is born to be free. GNU/"F"SF/GPL code has never been.

Re:g4u/g4l for the lazy.

[ulib]

Go to Freshmeats home page and search for g4l and read the freakin discussion. Its damn disgusting on this debat. I support both BSD, GPL licenses and not giving credit where its due is theft, in addition to being wrong. A project like g4l can only damage the community as a whole.

I say respect the licenses. Give credit where crdit is due.

Hubert, you have one supporter and I suspect many, many more.

Very well said - count me in as well. This is not about which license is better. This is, frankly, about complying with the basic rules of civilization...

Re:g4u/g4l for the lazy.

[Shanep]

You're the clueless idiot. The BSD (sans advertising clause) is GPL compatible, any changes you make, you can choose to re-release the entire program under the GPL. The old code before your changes can still be considered under BSD, but everything else can be GPL'd.

Have you read the BSD licence and this story?

Copyright (c) ,
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

* Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

In other words (the bold part), the BSD licence must remain with any code that has had the BSD licence applied.

The GPL idiot and thief, removed the BSD licence from the original authors BSD licenced code. You cannot change a few words and then strip out the copyright/licence, let alone replace those with your details and a licence of your choosing.

If any original code remains, then the BSD licence must also.

This 4gl business, is a copyright infringement and must be one of the most dishonorable and blatant OSS violations I have seen in a while. Unforunately, in every community, there are going to be some scumbags.

g4u

[Anonymous Coward]

g4u is great program for cloning disks. It is similar to Nortons product, but much cheaper, and not as user friendly ( a good thing in my books )

I wonder if the FSF people would help fight the BSD license infringment...

Re:g4u

[SillyNickName4me]

> (although some never grow out of it, like Micheal Moore). Basicly irrationally doing activism for activism sakes (like GPL advocacy) without figuring that their own actions are irresponsible, damaging, and stupid.

Ah, you mean like typical anti Moore activism among American republicans?

Gotta love those pot-kettle posts.

Re:g4u

[torstenvl]

Like Michael Moore, or -- for a better example -- like the Founding Fathers! Didn't they realize that claiming independence instead of rationally, slowly, carefully, and diplomatically working for reform as a colony would cause the deaths of so many people? How immature of George Washington!

</sarcasm>

Re:g4u

[ulib]

This is really *too* gross:
...like the Founding Fathers! Didn't they realize that claiming independence instead of rationally, slowly, carefully, and diplomatically working for reform as a colony would cause the deaths of so many people? How immature of George Washington!
(sarcasm)

You are putting the fight for American Independence and the fight against "Proprietary Software" on the same level??...

Get a life. No, seriously.

Re:g4u

[torstenvl]

American Independence and the fight against Proprietary Software are instances of ideology.

I think that I very clearly compared the people and their actions, not the ends they were trying to meet.

Not to mention that neither Michael Moore NOR George Washington have ever fought against Proprietary Software, so I would have to say that your comment is moot.

Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

I know of two other programs which also stole BSD code (in one case) and Apache code (in another case). They simply removed the credits and license and put their own name and the GPL in its place! Fortunately both of those projects are dead now.

like a BMW

[yukonbob]

fitting that he's from Germany...

The interview was only mildly interesting, technically speaking, but I'd like to say that the "fit and finish" of the NetBSD operating system is the highest quality I've experienced. Things really seem to work well together, and it's quite a joy to use. It's obvious the whole OS is developed as an OS (versus a kernel w/ a bunch of other projects' programs), and that developers/decision makers think critically about their decisions... I liken it to (what I imagine) driving a BMW, versus a crappy economy car. Now if it only supported DRI for accelerated X --- perhaps that'll move forward w/ X Org gaining acceptance and momentum...

Very interesting, from a ports perspective

[agent dero]

He has a very interesting perspective on pksrc, which I _really_ love.

for those who don't know

He probably is what would be portrayed as a hackers-everyman.
I mean, yes, he does have a lot of CompSci and coding experience, but he does some of the necessary things that most people (relatively of course) can do, such as documentation, mirroring, and helping out with packages.

There's more to a project than just coders ;)

NetBSD deserves more media coverage

[ulib]

It's nice to read interviews to the developers of this clean and compact OS (not to mention performant and record-breaking :).
As soon as NetBSD 2.0 comes out I'm gonna install it on my Acer laptop. I don't know if the setup might require some fiddling, but I'm sure that every minute spent to understand this OS would be well worth (as it has been for FreeBSD).

The Open Source issues.

[ulib]

> GNU Public Virus...

Indeed. How nice it would be if the GNU people abandoned this crusading style of theirs, according to which everything that serves to their political purpose is ultimately justified, no matter how disgusting.

Open Source is supposed to be fun.
The problem is, there's somebody for whom Open Source is a goddamn political thing. Hence, all means are legitimate - spreading FUD and violating licenses among these - to get rid of whatever is in the way. The BSD license, much less restrictive than the GPL, is of course one of the first targets.

I don't like it this way. And this is one of the main reasons (the other ones are technical) I steer clear of Linux and GPL'd stuff whenever it's possible. Luckily, it often is.

Re:Have a look at this :)

[ulib]

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1 157074&forum_id=408762

The more I think of this guy, the more I pity him. Not only he violates a BSD copyright (and to violate a *BSD* copyright, as little restrictive as it is, it takes really much!) but, after all the upheaval around his "project" (mandatory quotes..) he doesn't even have the guts to come out of the anonimity he hides behind.

Really, a clueless trolling /. Anonymous Coward looks like a brave hero compared to this person. :)))

Re:Invalid comparison

[torstenvl]

What do you define as Communism?

Certainly it has nothing to do with the desire to "provide for the common welfare."

</sarcasm>

PF

[glitchvern]

I realize this is off-topic, but how is pf on netbsd coming along, and on freebsd for that matter? Is this the right site to be looking at? Does anyone have any experience with it? How stable and well does it run? It says pf on net still doesn't have altq integration. That's a shame because the altq documentation use to say to up the number of time slices the scheduler makes from 100 to 1000 times a second, which Open doesn't let you do. Are you still suppose to do that on Free and Net? For that matter how does pf's altq integration handle now on Open? Last time I tried it (long time ago) it wasn't recommended for people with an uplink as small as I had (128k) and did not work that well when I tried anyway, but it looks like the examples use that now.