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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.
I, for one, am glad that this huge shitstorm over a minor licensing issue has been resolved amicably (or at least until Theo has his say...)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
There is one good thing that comes out of this: collaboration between BSD and Linux developers on wireless drivers. The licensing issue was bound to happen sooner or later on some piece of code. It's good that it happened early on in a project and with only bruised egos to show for it.
Wireless support in OpenBSD is outstanding. You can use ifconfig to manage your wireless devices just like you can for wired interfaces. I don't know a whole lot about OpenHAL, but if it works the way wireless does in OpenBSD, common libraries are simply reused so that developers can get new drivers up and running quickly. This will be a good thing for Linux, and the additional attention will improve wireless support for both platforms.
Ok, they are indeed announcing that supposed changes by the Linux Wireless folks involved in this dispute will be released under a dual GPL or ISC license. But the last time I heard about this dispute, Reyk and Theo's most pressing claim was that the Linux Wireless developers in question illegally put their own copyright and license notices on work that they did not own; i.e., their position is that the Linux Wireless folks, in more than one instance, hadn't done enough original work for their release to qualify as a derived work of Reyk's code.
I don't see anything in TFA that directly addresses this. There is a link to a new document about originality requirements under the law (which I haven't read yet, I'll admit), but I would hope that this issue was addressed explicitly.
Are you adequate?
Isn't it horrible that reasonable people came together, worked things out, and decided on the best course of action? Now, the people who will obviously continue to rant will look like all they have is an agenda.
Reading quickly, the real meat of this is code analysis document, where the SFLC seems to argue, contrary to Theo and Reyk, that the files with the added copyright notices do qualify for derived work. (Still reading it.)
Are you adequate?
Other than the fact that this is a flamebit, you seem to have missed the obvious moral superiority that BSD developers believe they have. If they didn't, Theo wouldn't be yelling about how wrong the GPL is.
The GPL is a militant license. I totally agree. It's just as militant as the companies it was designed to fight against. It was designed to make sure that no company could take GPL'd code and use it without returning the favor. Most companies would not do that without being forced. Look at Microsoft use BSD code in its operating system, not provide access to it, and at the same time try to destroy free software with the money it makes. Look at the trouble it is having doing this with GPL software.
As I have said before, when the only two ways to release software are BSD and GPL, the GPL will no longer be necessary, but we are not there.
The SLFC's document about originality requirements spends nearly all of its time citing USA court decisions, whereas any action would be brought in Germany, not the USA. Yes, the very last section of the document (section 7) handwaves away this critical issue, by saying that we can use American copyright law as a guideline as to whether requirements of E.C. copyright law are met.
IANAL, but isn't this a pretty bad idea?
Are you adequate?
The Intel cards are among the best-supported wireless cards on Linux. The new one has been supported for a while now by the iwl4965 driver. It is in Ubuntu Gutsy (which is quite stable already, btw), and Gentoo, just to name two distributions.
Oh, and I am typing this on WPA-PSK with the native iwl4965 driver on x86-64, without any hacks or tweaks.
If I release my code under a BSD-style license, the fact that I allow you to use my code in nearly any way you want doesn't mean that I allow you to steal the credit for my work. This is really what this issue boils down to, which people repeatedly seem to miss.
The OpenBSD side's legal allegations are that first that their code was taken without attribution (stripping the original author's copyright notices), that somebody who doesn't own their code acted as if they did (by changing the license notice to GPL only), and then that even when the original notices were more or less restored, there was a claim to owning part of the work in question (by adding additional copyright and license notices), when there were (by their allegation) no original contributions, and thus, no part of the released work that was owned by anybody other than the BSD folk.
Are you adequate?