If you think about the BSD license in terms of an academic citation, it makes more sense.
In the original patch, it appeared that some Linux folk took some code, stripped the BSD copyright notice and put it under a GPL license. Viewed through an academic mindset, it sounds less like "building on existing research" and more like plagiarism. Were they legally entitled to do what they did? I suspect probably so. Still, it seems like bad form not to cite your sources.
In the diff that I saw, there was a BSD license notice, and a trailing paragraph saying that the code could also be distributed under GPLv2. The Linux developer apparently took this as meaning that the code could also be distributed under GPLv2 (what gall!), and so changed the file to include a GPLv2 license notice.
There are apparently some questions about exactly what code was covered by the offer of alternate license terms, but they will likely never be resolved because, as soon as it came to his attent
Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
Think of BSD license like citing sources (Score:4, Insightful)
In the original patch, it appeared that some Linux folk took some code, stripped the BSD copyright notice and put it under a GPL license. Viewed through an academic mindset, it sounds less like "building on existing research" and more like plagiarism. Were they legally entitled to do what they did? I suspect probably so. Still, it seems like bad form not to cite your sources.
-Peter
Re: (Score:2)
In the diff that I saw, there was a BSD license notice, and a trailing paragraph saying that the code could also be distributed under GPLv2. The Linux developer apparently took this as meaning that the code could also be distributed under GPLv2 (what gall!), and so changed the file to include a GPLv2 license notice.
There are apparently some questions about exactly what code was covered by the offer of alternate license terms, but they will likely never be resolved because, as soon as it came to his attent