Theo de Raadt On Relicensing BSD Code

Posted by kdawson on Thursday September 13, 2007 @04:02AM from the read-the-berne-convention dept.

iBSD writes "KernelTrap has an interesting article in which Theo de Raadt discusses the legal implications of the recent relicensing of OpenBSD's BSD-licensed Atheros driver under the GPL. De Raadt says, 'it has been like pulling teeth since (most) Linux wireless guys and the SFLC do not wish to admit fault. I think that the Linux wireless guys should really think hard about this problem, how they look, and the legal risks they place upon the future of their source code bodies.' He stressed that the theory that BSD code can simply be relicensed to the GPL without making significant changes to the code is false, adding, 'in their zeal to get the code under their own license, some of these Linux wireless developers have broken copyright law repeatedly. But to even get to the point where they broke copyright law, they had to bypass a whole series of ethical considerations too.'"

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Re:Sure, but by Anonymous Coward · 2007-09-13 04:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

The GPLers didn't strip the licence. The code was available under either licence. What gets me is that Theo De Raadt is arguing that both licences apply so they couldnt remove one. He seems to not realise that if both licences applied then they couldn't use the code in FreeBSD anyway because they would be bound by the GPL parts of the licence. Funny that they kicked him off the NetBSD team for being so hard to work with. I wonder why ...