Resolution of BSD-GPL Wireless Code Dispute?

An anonymous reader writes "The highly publicized debate between Theo de Raadt and the Software Freedom Law Center seems to have come to an amicable end. SFLC has published its research on the lineage of the ath5k driver and determined who owns which changes. In the end, everyone agreed to license their modifications to the Linux driver under the BSD license, and OpenBSD developers can now reincorporate those improvements into the original code (with the exception of one historically GPL-licensed branch)." The article notes that Theo de Raadt has not responded publicly to this development but that comments on the issue in an OpenBSD Journal forum have been generally positive.

Comments

Here's a scenario.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

I know what you're driving at, vaguely, that BSD licensed code encourages propagation of standards a nnd interoperability, but for most that doesn't come close to outweighing the idea that they don't want their effort to be able to be taken and sold for profit by others.

That's not exactly what I have in mind. The case I have in mind is along the following lines: suppose I think it's desirable for others to take my BSD-licensed software and incorporate it into propritetary works, as long as I judge the resulting work to be truly innovative. I think FOSS licensing makes sense for software that is, in effect, a superior, community-driven reimplentation of something that already exists, but that it's good that people can license truly innovative software proprietarily, so as to create incentives for such innovation. On the other hand, I think people who take my software and incorporate it, without doing any truly innovative work, are being selfish.

Now, of course, the problem is that I see no good way at all of writing a free software license that allows people to incorporate my work into proprietary products only they are "innovative." I can't see myself ever being able to nail down what "innovative" means without the benefit of hindsight. I'd be setting myself up for legal nightmares if somebody tried to test my attempts in court. Also, an unclear and complex legal document will most likely prevent interested parties from using my work in ways I intended, because of the legal unclarity of the status of their derived work. I could have such parties contact me for special licenses, but that's a hassle both for them and me. In the light of these issues, I judge that it's better to just allow people to do what they want, because it's guaranteed to empower the "good guys" (in my hazy, not-well-defined conception) to do the things I want them to be able to do. The downside, of course, is that I'll get "bad guys" doing things that I think are bad. But I will sure as hell reserve the right to protest when they do so. I've renounced the right to sue them, not the right to tell them they're being bad.