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Linux Wireless Driver Violates BSD License?
bsdphx writes "After years of encouragement from the OpenBSD community for others to use Reyk Floeter's free Atheros wireless driver, it seems that the Linux world is finally listening. Unfortunately, they seem to think that they can strip the BSD license right out of it."
Not just that, but it appears that the original file was dual licensed to BSD and GPLv2.
What exactly is this article about?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The original BSD vaersion is still out there.
Just like it would if the code was taken properitary.It's a bit rich to deny people to keep their own changes proprietary, wouldn't you say?
Except that's what the GPL tries to do. It's removing freedom.
And that's what many of us BSDers are against. We want our software to keep freedom. Including the freedom of future developers to keep their own changes private, or get paid for them. Thereby, we also allow the end users the freedom to buy those changes - a freedom they wouldn't have if the code was GPLed, because the incentive to make the changes wouldn't be there.
As an example, we have Apples operating system, partially made on code I wrote. And I'm a very happy user of it, even though I (or rather, my employer) had to pay for the extra stuff Apple has added. The ability to do so is a freedom I have partially gotten from having released my software under the BSD license.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
The BSD and GPL communities are two groups with much in common and some differences. That's especially true of the OpenBSD people who are very much committed to freedom for their software (and just disagree with the GPL people about how that is best defined). This kind of article is about trying to set up atificial disagreements between those communities so that they don't cooperate well. I write copyleft software and content (GPL/GFDL/CC-SA) but I would mostly relicence it if an important project like OpenBSD or X.org asked for it. I would make that decision based on the value of the project. If I feel that a project is harmful overall then I probably wouldn't.
The trick is that we have to not be divided and work together sensibly.
OpenBSD developers have time and time again claimed "moral superiority" over GNU and Linux due to their adoption of a license that allows code to be used in closed projects. It always was a specious argument, but it's looking all the more absurd today.
Claiming any particular licence (BSD/GPL) to be superior is like asserting that cars are superior to helicopters. In far too many cases, the licences are dragged in to try to justify a bad argument, and the fault lies with both camps. GNU and BSD zealots alike adopt Talibanesque positions that do nothing but harm to the community.
This story should have been a simple clear-cut case it weren't for a small rabble-rousing group. Funnily enough, Theo posted a fairly decent and non-inflamatory respones in the early discussions. This is in stark contrast to the earlier GPL case (mentioned in your post) where his reaction was indefensible.
Incidentally, the BSD licence infringement has already taken place. That happened as soon as the author distributed the code with the licence stripped from it. Doesn't matter whether or not it hit a main-stream kernel. As soon as he made it available to others, distribution kicked-in. That said, the author has a case to answer for but certainly not the entire Linux community the "OMG LINUX STOLE OUR CODE!" crowd would have us think.
-- Using the preview button since 2005