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Linux Wireless Driver Violates BSD License?

Posted by kdawson on from the put-it-back dept.

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."

4 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. Mod parent up! by Eivind+Eklund · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Parent has insightfully noticed his own error. And the error is modded up. So mod the parent up.

    The move is clearly against the BSD license. (Also, combining GPLv2ed code and BSDed code is subtly against the GPL, as the requirement to reproduce the license - as shown and violated here - is an extra requirement compared to the GPL, violating the "no additional restrictions" clause of the GPL.)

    Eivind.

    --
    Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
  2. Re:No... It's about something a little different.. by StormReaver · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Except that it's the author and copyright holder who did it, and he's allowed to do what he likes with his copyrighted works."

    The submitter wrote some of the driver, but there are a few other names in the Copyright list. There is no information in the article indicating their (dis)approval.

  3. I wouldn't even go that far by einhverfr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think the difference is how freedom is best preserved. In a BSDL community, you encourage everyone to contribute because it benefits them and everyone else by doing so, and it hurts them not to contribute. This works becasue if one doesn't contribute back then it becomes prohibitive to upgrade to the latest version fairly quickly, but if one does contribute then everyone else can supply patches and improvements. Furtermore, if two people create a different fix to the same problem and only one contributes the patch, the person who didn't gets screwed, especially if their version is better since now they have to maintain the difference or lose functionality.

    BSD uses economics to protect freedom. GPL tries to use the force of law.

    Generally I prefer the BSD approach but tend to feel safer with the GPL :-)

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    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  4. Re:No... It's about something a little different.. by Thomas+Charron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Please cite me any source of information that says dual license means you are bound by two separate and distinct licenses. All definitions of Dual License I have seen are an either license context, not BOTH licenses. A good example is MySQL. Dual licensed under a commercial license where anyone can do what they want for a fee. They in no way are required to redistribute the code if they choose a commercial license.

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    -- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..