Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

GPL Hindering Two-Way Code Sharing?

Posted by kdawson on from the thank-you-and-goodbye dept.

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has some fascinating coverage of the recent rift between the OpenBSD developers and the Linux kernel developers. Proponents of the GPL defend their license for enforcing that their code can always be shared. However in the current debate the GPL is being added to BSD-licensed code, thereby preventing it from being shared back with the original authors of the code. Thus, a share-and-share-alike license is effectively preventing two-way sharing." We discussed an instance of this one-way effect a few days back.

1 of 456 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Simple solution by EvanED · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Or did someone issue an edict that Linux kernel code can't be dual-licensed, at some point when I wasn't paying attention?

    I think the point of the story is the following:
    1. Developer A writes some code for OpenBSD (or whatever)
    2. Developer B says "that's cool, I wish Linux had that"
    3. Developer B ports developer A's code to Linux
    4. Developer B then starts improving on A's code

    However, developer B doesn't want to release his changes under the BSD license, so the improved version goes out GPL-only. Developer A says "hey, wait, that sucks", because now he can't incorporate those changes back into OpenBSD, which does (I assume) have a policy that all code must be BSD-licensed.

    One one hand, it's unfortunate, because OpenBSD loses out. On the other hand, the original author wrote the code knowing that someone could take it and not release changes (for instance, incorporate it into Windows or Mac OS X or SunOS or something like that), and this really isn't all that much different.