GPL Hindering Two-Way Code Sharing? 456
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.
For fucks sake, it's forking... (Score:5, Informative)
The GPL and BSD type licenses coexist perfectly, so long as both parties take the time to understand each other. Which is mostly the way it's happened. Kind of making this a none story.
Do the BSD proponents understand "Alternatively" (Score:4, Informative)
Clue: it doesn't mean "as well as".
What the original author of the code has to say: (Score:5, Informative)
So Theo and the rest of his OpenBSD-Trolls better shut up.
Re:For fucks sake, it's forking... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Do the BSD proponents understand "Alternatively (Score:2, Informative)
a brief FAQ on this controversy (Score:5, Informative)
A: A contributor of a patch to the linux kernel didn't notice that it contained both dual-licensed and BSD-only code, and posted a diff that GPL'ed the whole thing.
Q: What happened then?
A: Several things. 1) The mistaken (and clearly incorrect) change of license on BSD-only code was rectified. 2) Theo de Raadt leaped upon this golden opportunity to accuse the linux kernel developers of stealing code and eating babies 3) Separate issues of the legal and ethical obligations related to license changes, dual-licensing, proprietary software, and the price of peanuts in Perth were immediately injected in the discussion and a classic internet blizzard of bullshit blanketed the land of free software.
Q: Latest news?
A: Several developers involved have attempted to help the situation by saying they want collaboration and harmony and dual-licensing their code, but these positive efforts have gone mostly unnoticed as everyone on all sides proceeds to get angry and confused. Apparently high intensity behind the scenes consultations with Eben Moglen have resulted in a daring mission to dual license an OS/2 + Novell Netware application stack under GPL 3 as translated into Babylonian Cuneiform, thus simplifying the situation for everyone.
Q: What's the moral of the story?
A: Sometimes, cooperation is harder to achieve than competition, or "the greedy fox gets stuck debugging the rotten oysters".
Everybody seems to have missed the key part of TFA (Score:5, Informative)
The Linux code is being patched to fix the license problem, says TFA. Here's the content of the patch [marc.info].
Note what the patch is doing, very carefully. The patch is changing the copyright notices on top of the modified files to say that these files are licensed under the GPL, but are also based upon an earlier work licensed under the BSD, and then reproduce the copyright and license statements as required by the original BSD licenses. This makes completely transparent the following things:
Re:BSD (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, improvements on the GPL side won't be BSD licensed, but any proprietary company which takes it won't contribute back, either. This is what the BSD license fans call "freedom." "Freedom" here means the ability to do anything you want with the code, including close it up entirely. GPL fans use "Free" tomean that the code stays open. Don't confuse the two.
Re:BSD (Score:2, Informative)
Read these two posts.
1> http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=11886560592926
2> http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=11886574891197
Re:Bzzz, sorry, wrong answer. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is not the point (Score:3, Informative)
And that's the inherant problem with the BSD license, people can mod your code and not give it back to you.
The complaint here is about the hypocrisy of the GPL camp, who claim that they don't want anyone to use their code without giving back the changes, but then turn around and do just that to the BSD people's code.
There's no hypocrisy in that. Anyone can use the changes that where GPL'd, but you just have to adhere to the GPL license for those changes. The hyprocisy is the BSD camp saying "be free to use our code any way you want" and when people take them up on the offer, they complain.