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Theo de Raadt Responds to Linux Licensing Issues
bsdphx writes "While Theo may have a reputation of being "difficult" in some circles, this response to the recent relicensing controversy is thoughtful and well penned. Through this whole process I've learned some new things about both GPL and BSD licensing, and especially about combining the two."
The intent of the GPL is to be a one-way trip. The idea is to create a large pool of identically-licensed code so that projects msy mix and match, borrow and steal from each other.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The problem is that certain Linux developers don't want to 'just get along.' Driver support is an important issue for all Free operating systems. Projects like DRI have been really great for this. DRI drivers are licensed under the MIT license (as is the rest of X), which is about as permissive as you can get without going public domain; it's even more permissive than the BSDL. This has allowed the DRI drivers to be used on FreeBSD, and even on some more obscure and less UNIX-like operating systems (I believe Haiku has used some of their code, for example).
Many people within the Linux community seem to view hardware support as something that gives them a competitive advantage over other operating systems, a viewpoint, perhaps, that they learned from Microsoft. Because Linux has the most restrictive license of any non-proprietary kernel, they make it hard for others to use their work, but continue to benefit from the work of others. Porting a driver from OpenBSD (for example) to Linux requires changing the interface. The converse requires a complete reimplementation.
When Linux developers go to the trouble of reverse engineering a piece of hardware, no one is arguing that they shouldn't be allowed to pick their own license. The problem comes when an OpenBSD developer goes to this trouble, and the Linux team then decides that any changes they make to the driver will be licensed in such a way that they can't be ported upstream.
In much of the community, it is generally considered bad form to add more restrictions to someone else's work. I tend to prefer the 3-clause BSDL for my own work, but some code I am working on now is based on some work that was originally released under the MITL. If I slap a BSDL at the top, then no improvements I make can be used by the original project, or by anyone else basing their work off the same source. If I stripped the MITL and replaced it with the BSDL then, as Eben Moglen points out, this would be illegal. This is the equivalent of what a few people in the Linux community wanted to do. I could place the BSDL above the MITL, covering my changes and the complete work, but not any of the original code. This would be legal, but it would be incredibly impolite. The F/OSS community is a community, and if it wants to survive then a culture of respect for the opinions and work of others is important.
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However you can take BSD code, add it to your own project and distribute just the binaries of your project without giving any source code to anyone and it is not illegal under BSD. But BSD is a license and it cannot be legally removed from a licensed file.
I still think that's bizarre though. All this licensing stuff is just headache-inducing.
At the very moment Shylock is about to cut Antonio with his knife, Portia points out a flaw in the contract (see Quibble (plot device)). The bond only allows Shylock to remove the flesh, not blood, of Antonio. If Shylock were to shed any drop of Antonio's blood in doing so, his "lands and goods" will be forfeited under Venetian laws. You can't strip a license without also taking the blood. With the license stripped, the code is rendered dead to the purpose under debate. See Quibble (I'm-smarter-than-you device).
You're right, but that situation is BETTER. Theo pointed something very obvious out that you're missing:
Many businesses give back to BSD.
No GPL code will ever go back to BSD.
GPL'ing BSD code is a slap in the face that says "We will never, ever, give back. Period."