Software Freedom Law Center vs Theo de Raadt

An anonymous reader writes "In a recent public posting to the Linux Kernel mailing list the founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, Eben Moglen, lashed back at OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt without actually mentioning his name. 'What has happened is that people who do not have full possession of the facts and have no legal expertise — people whom from the very beginning we have been trying to help — have made irresponsible charges and threatened lawsuits, thus slowing down our efforts to help them.' Moglen pointed out that they have and continue to help all open source projects, including OpenBSD, but the process takes time. 'The required work has been made more arduous because some people have chosen not to cooperate in good faith. But we will complete the work as soon as we can, and we will follow the community's practice of complete publication, so everyone can see all the evidence.'"

Comments

BSD code can't be relicenced - it can be linked!

[saterdaies]

The BSD License does NOT allow for relicensing:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

        * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
        * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
        * Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

If you are using a piece of BSD-licensed code, you must forever obey those three terms. They allow you to LINK code against any code - GPL, proprietary, whatever. BUT, you must always reproduce the copyright notice and the list of conditions. Nothing gives you the right to remove them.

So, you can create a derivative work that uses both GPL and BSD code, but that BSD code hasn't become GPL'd and you must still obey the terms of the BSD license. This is a common misconception because the BSD license's terms are so liberal. So, Linux (and other GPL projects) can appropriate code from the BSD world provided that they obey the three terms listed in the BSD license. GPL projects can add GPL code to BSD code in the same file, but until the BSD code is gone from that file - which would probably happen over years of rewrites - they have to obey those three clauses. No where does the BSD license say "you can disobey these clauses because you've changed the license."

Enforceability of contracts is what makes the GPL work. If the GPL world says it doesn't work when it's someone else's license, their projects are in deep trouble. And to think, this whole mess could be solved by simply removing that stupid relicense crap which has almost no practical implication other than GPL-ego.

Re:BSD code can't be relicenced - it can be linked

[itsybitsy]

This depends on which files you are talking about in this case. Actually it seems that the so called "dual licensing" of the driver wasn't legally done for the files that are really in dispute! Since appending the GPL to a BSD licensed file itself was a violation of copyright any such GPL license is in violation and is thus the GPL license terms are null and void from having control of those files.

Who'd want a license anyway that prevented me from simply linking source code or binary code licensed under another license? That would be Totalitarian Control (which is what the GPL attempts).

True-Free Software is BSD or even better, Public Domain.