Resolution of BSD-GPL Wireless Code Dispute? 215
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.
Great. Can we move on now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Theo is not a lawyer (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Great. Can we move on now? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Reasonable People (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great. Can we move on now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is a good debate to have... (Score:1, Insightful)
That seems to be only true if one wants to relicense it under a non-free license, but if one is willing to license it under a license with a different sense of freedom, they obviously get their panties in a wad.
BSD license confussion. (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems kind of petty to whine about someone stealing your code if you're releasing it under the BSD license though. By using the BSD license instead of the GPL you're choosing to let people take from you without giving back. I frequently hear the argument that BSD licensed code is really free, and the GPL isn't, over exactly this issue.
Re:This is a good debate to have... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Theo is not a lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
So whilst it is true that he is not a lawyer, bringing that up is completely irrelevant. He was correct nonetheless.
Re:So uh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It'd be nice to get better collaboration with the Atheros drivers.
Wireless is the big hole with Linux. Its support is dodgy at best.
Re:This is a good debate to have... (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people still put great store by public demeanor, that they will prefer having a business relationship with someone who appears reasonable (even knowing that they will probably stab you in the back tomorrow) over someone who cannot control their temper to have a discussion.
Having said that, I have to make it clear that in no way do I think Ballmer's contributions (if they can be termed as such) towards IT is anywhere close to Theo de Raadt. And just in case you want to bring up RMS, I really don't know much about him, but while GPL is his baby, I don't think he represents programmers who adopt GPL for their codes.
I understand Theo does not represent the whole of the BSD camp, but if Theo really thinks their "philosophy" is "morally superior" to GPL, then he should stop complaining in interviews about how companies don't give them money.
Re:This is a good debate to have... (Score:3, Insightful)
The GPL only covers redistribution, not use.
Re:Great. Can we move on now? (Score:3, Insightful)
See here: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/85224/index.html [lxer.com]
GPL no more. (Score:2, Insightful)
What I think is more important is freely available documentation. Join that fight instead. If FOSS is so superior as the advocates claim, then proprietary software will eventually go away, GPL or no GPL (unless, ofcourse, people actually
Tivo(ization)? Really, what's wrong with it? People have the freedom to not use it. They also have the freedom to use it, and many do. Why? Because it's a cool product and 99.9% doesn't give a crap about having access to source code and being able to modify the product. The FSF seems to imply that you do not have the freedom to not care about these things. "No! That's not freedom! You'll be dominated by your software, handcuffed!". What? I'm watching TV!
"But without the GPL, software won't
Now, this wasn't exactly what the article was about, but I just felt like having a little rant
Re:GPL no more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but they can't redistribute the combined work of "your" code and "their" modifications, in binary form, without redistributing the source to their modifications. That's very significant if their goal is to profit from the combination via redistribution.
The argument goes like this: "Why should you freely benefit from my hard work when I can't benefit from yours?" the BSD camp doesn't care (as far as commercial lockup is concerned) where the GPL camp does.
The argument that the GPL is "restrictive" or "non-free" in the sense that it does not permit the "freedom" to make derived works "non-free" is simply semantic bull feces. Without a license, copyright (at least in the U.S. and similar places) would grant NONE of the freedoms the GPL does. The fact that it does not grant ALL freedoms instead does not make it "restrictive". The fact that it grants many makes it "free" (though "liberal" might be a better adjective).
GPLv2 had a number of weaknesses and I think GPLv3 retains some of them. For example, I once was employed by a company that took much GPL code, made significant enhancements (particularly to the Anaconda installer, and SYSLINUX), redistributed the result, but did not share the enhancements with the "community"... all in accordance with the GPL.
How?
Simple. We DID distribute source to all our recipients of the combined work, some half-dozen of them, for millions of dollars each. Each of them had absolutely no interest in further redistribution, having paid the high price, and so the enhancements effectively stayed "locked up". Pity that: I thought some of them were useful.
As far as a GPL-hijacking of BSD code is concerned, it seams to me that the combined derived work can be licensed under the GPL, so long as the original BSD bits (including bits that were deleted) can be extracted and taken private. What part of "Portions licensed under the BSD license" is so hard to understand? Of course, I'm muddying the difference between derived work and aggregated works here, but if I combine A and B to produce C, and can yet recover A and B from C, who's to say it isn't an aggregate? I fact, if I simply aggregate A and B, and provide the recipient the mechanism to produce C from them for his own use, the aggregation argument is even stronger (another potential weaknes of GPLv2).
A court might not see that "hack" in a positive light, and argue that the combined work is a derivative of BSD-licensed code and therefore has to be redistributed as such, but even that can be overcome: imagine I have a box into which I download A, and B. I can ask the box to produce A or B. The box, however, can use A and B in an interesting way. Who's to say the box does not aggregate A and B? Who's to say that C is not a compressed version of the aggregate of A and B? I think that if something has all the properties of an aggregate, a strong argument can be made for treating it as an aggregate.
Of course, that wouldn't be playing nice with the BSD folks, but it strikes me as possible.
Re:Reasonable People (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Specifically... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the need to multi-license code is one of the stickiest points of open licenses. The biggest issue of course is that a single logical segment of code may not have been authored by a single individual and in that case no single individual may have the right to release the entire logical segment under additional licenses. On the one hand this makes it harder to re-close open code but on the other it's also harder to relicense or multi-license code.
From a practical point of view, multiple owners of a code stack is something of a pain. If I want to dual-license a program I wrote under GPL and a closed license (ie for money you can license the code and not return your changes) I can do that but the issue becomes stickier if I merge changes submitted by others back into my code tree. If I don't merge those changes back into the code tree then much of the benefit of making it GPL is lost.
You ignore spirit of FOSS, giving back ... (Score:3, Insightful)
You completely misunderstand the issue. The issue is not complying with the letter of the BSD license, the issue is ethical behavior and the spirit of FOSS. At the core of FOSS is the ethic of giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon. If you are taking a BSD work, integrating it into your GPL project, and making *minor* changes or bug fixes it is ethical to submit those changes/fixes to the BSD community. If you are making *major* additions then there would be no ethical requirement to share, but for minor changes and bug fixes there is. Again, I'm referring to ethics and the spirit of FOSS, which is certainly something different than the letter of a license.
I also find *some* hypocrisy among the more enthusiastic GPL advocates. They defend the letter of the license with respect to using BSD code, yet they claim that those selling products based upon Linux should go beyond the GPL and give back more than the source code. That such vendors should also target their products towards Linux desktop users rather than only Windows and Mac users. I have nothing against encouraging vendors to consider Linux, but this logic bothers me given the way BSD developers are sometimes treated. Which is it? Share when it is not excessively burdensome to do so or do what is minimally required by law?
The BSD License provides other ways to deal with (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two basic things:
1) No company wants to compete with a Free product. Even one which is merely gratis is problematic (look where Netscape went). Since a proprietary product can only charge for their value adds, they don't get anything by taking the code continuously while never giving back. Note that in the last siven years, I have watched most prioprietary spinnoffs of PostgreSQL die. These include Mammoth PostgreSQL, Pervasive PostgreSQL, and Fujitsu PostgreSQL.
2) Refusing to contribute has serious financial risks in BSDL project. Basicaly, if someone else makes inferior but similar modifications, you end up bearing the burden of managing an increasingly complex changeset across versions. This is extremely draining.
So I think you are mistaken as to whom the second class citizens really are in such a project. Note again, in the PostgreSQL world, those companies that do use the code in their proprietary products successfully give back everything they possibly can (meaning everything the community expresses an interest in making part of the core project). The community as a whole doesn't really want the proprietary bits in BizgressMPP, nor do they want the Oracle compat bits of EnterpriseDB. So everyone is just as happy to let them sell their products.
Re:BSD license confussion. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You ignore spirit of FOSS, giving back ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I certainly agree that the ethical thing to do, and the smart long-term thing to do, is to open all source code, protocols, specifications, etc. In reality that isn't how things work though. Just wishing for it to be that way won't make it that way. Intelligent people know that a basic principal of life is that we're all in it together. Unfortunately most of us can't see past our immediate self and how our choices will have a short-term benefit to our person. That's why you need restrictions in your license - to push people to act in ways they might not otherwise be willing to act.
If the world was full of unselfish good people the BSD license would be the way to go. It isn't - so the GPL is smarter. BSD dreams of a utopian society while GPL builds a workable, utopiaisk, society in our current reality.
I don't really care that much if developers are Linux friendly. I have a simple solution to that. I just don't buy from companies which don't work with the systems I need them to work with. If they don't offer full Linux support I just won't give them any of my money. Pretty easy. If there is demand for Linux support then somebody will fill that demand. That is how business works. e.g. I've been a long time user of Nvidia video cards. With AMD/ATI opening their specs I'll be keeping an eye on them for future video card purchases. If better drivers exist for ATI cards then I'll buy ATI cards. I spend the vast majority of my time using computers running Linux so that has high priority for me. I also use BSD, OS X, and Windows on a daily basis so I hope that by opening specs I'll see better support in those also.
Odd *and* wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is odd because it is most likely wrong. Nothing wrong with people with agendas (don't we all have some agenda?). But the rants are only good for digging trenches, making it harder for both side to agree on a solution to the benefit of all.