Slashdot Mirror
GPL Code Found In OpenBSD Wireless Driver
NormalVisual writes "The mailing lists were buzzing recently when Michael Buesch, one of the maintainers for the GPL'd bc43xx Broadcom wireless chip driver project, called the OpenBSD folks to task for apparently including code without permission from his project in the OpenBSD bcw project, which aims to provide functionality with Broadcom wireless chips under that OS. It seems that the problem has been resolved for now with the BSD driver author totally giving up on the project and Theo De Raadt taking the position that Buesch's posts on the subject were 'inhuman.'" More commentary from the BSD community is over at undeadly.org.
From Trollaxor
I received the email first thing in the morning from the IT department. Our network would be undergoing a major overhaul to correct the ad hoc growth it had experienced in the last year, and starting next week Internet access would be sporadic. There would also be a new firewall and security measures, replacing the old OpenBSD system I'd managed to get installed last Spring. Happy for the heads-up, I went to work right away to make sure Linux had no place on our network. This was not the first time that I had faced this threat.
About a year ago our network guy, the Open Source Mullet, was asked to draw up firewall plans. He was your typical GNU-slinger save that he had a cascade of flowing hair down the back of his head instead of a beard hanging from his face. And yeah, you can guess what he thought those firewalls were gonna run. I'd caught wind of the plans, however, and had charts, graphs, and comparisons written up detailing OpenBSD and Linux security. Since this GNU guy had a mullet and dressed like a slob, I got taken seriously. Not to mention my data impenetrable to any hippie logic. OpenBSD was more secure even to the beancounters and idiot management. So thanks to me, our firewalls happily ran OpenBSD and not Linux, which would have buffer-overflowed into no-man's land every other hour. The Open Source Mullet gave me a lot of dirty looks forever after, though.
Since the Open Source Mullet had been canned, a new threat had arisen at my workplace: the Fat Perl Hacker had assumed most of the Open Source Mullet's system and network administration duties, and it was no mystery to anyone at my workplace that he had a hard-on for Linux tucked away under his enormous, cascading gut. Since he was a major suck-up and workaholic, he had a lot more credibility than the Open Source Mullet -- this would be a real challenge for once. Dealing with the Open Source Mullet had been cake.
That night, I went to work on my strategy. First, I would document the changes in Linux and OpenBSD since a year ago when we last went with a security plan. Linux was still at version 2.4, while OpenBSD had raced from version 2.8 to 3.1 -- a major revision! This was good so far, and I included the relevant diffs for each. I wondered what the Fat Perl Hacker was up to and pushed ahead with my preparations.
Tuesday morning, I went to talk with the VP of Operations, who had final say on the network project. I wouldn't leave anything to chance. But after chatting with him for a few minutes, I learned of a major monkey-wrench I hadn't expected: instead of a Unix firewall system, he was planning on installing a dedicated firewall box -- running Windows XP. Thankful for my fortuitous social engineering, I went back to my desk and began making over my strategy to deal with this new threat. Not only would I have to deal with Linux, I'd have to eschew the Windows option now.
Sitting in front of my iBook after work, I realized that taking on Windows XP in the same manner I was going to deal with Linux would be foolish if not wasteful. Obviously the Windows option was not about numbers, anecdotes, or experience. It was a bean-counting decision and all of the security statistics in the world wouldn't matter. Since I hadn't the foggiest about how our accountants viewed the whole operation and didn't have time to learn, I'd have implement a rapid-fire real-life assault on the Windows box, which was sitting on the VP's desk awaiting its place on the network. It was time to put on my Black Hat, and that night I stayed up until 02:00 researching Windows XP vulnerabilities. Linux would have to wait.
With just two days before the network changeover was to take place, I marched into work Wednesday morning knowing that what I did in the next few hours would decide the fate of our network security. To my surprise, just moments after I had sat down, the Fat Perl Hacker asked me to join him for a cigarette outside -- away from the ears and
linux is still for fags.
fucking faggots!
Here we have yet another example of the truly wonderful kind of attitude spawned and promoted by the scourge that some of us know and loathe as the FSF; ergo, fear-based mean-spiritedness, megalomania, and paranoia.
As the FSF and its' associated drones become ever more corrupt and tyrannical in their behaviour, look for them to begin finding excuses to question the BSDs' right to exist. The BSDs give people who might otherwise have no choice but to put up with the FSF another option, and sooner or later they are going to decide that they doesn't like that enough that they will try and do something concrete about it. Control cannot be maintained if people have anywhere else to go.