This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 4, 2007 17:11 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227)
In reply to: This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right by cate
Parent article: Relicensing: what's legal and what's right

It's legal because the license SAID it was legal. Simple.

The license says, "you may choose to distribute this under either the BSD or the GPLv2." If you distribute it under the GPLv2, then all recipients of the work received it under the GPLv2 terms, and by those terms, they must abide by the GPLv2 (and nothing else) for all subsequent redistributions.

Note also that even though the BSD license says that it cannot be removed, that only applies if the license itself applies to the work. Since it is distributed under the GPL now, the BSD license no longer applies, and the "do not remove" clause is therefor irrelevant. There is no law against cutting up legal documents (although they are not valid if modified and not ratified by all parties involved), but no legal document was modified. The header is not by itself a legal document - it is merely a notice of which license applies to the text. Notice that the GPL itself is not in the header. The header just says, "use this license," and since the modified work is now GPL, that's all the header has to say.

That said, I still this is really lame of the Linux developers. They're being selfish. The BSD developers are likewise being lame, because they're bitching about Linux devs doing the same thing proprietary devs do. Both sides are in the wrong, ethically, in my opinion.

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This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 4, 2007 19:28 UTC (Tue) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (2 responses)

That said, I still this is really lame of the Linux developers. They're being selfish.

I think you owe an apology to Linux developers. They are not selfish.

Not only wasn't the patch removing BSD license from ath5k ever applied, but the author of the patch withdrew it promptly. The idea of removing BSD license from the dual licensed files received very little support in linux-wireless list.

Incorrect patches are proposed all the time, and get shot in the review process, as it happened in this case.

This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 6, 2007 7:38 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] (1 responses)

Sure. But there is one legitimate point coming from the BSD-camp.

Linux benefited by being allowed to copy their code.

If we then later find bugs in the same code, or make improvements to it, it would be nice of us to share those improvements and bugfixes with the BSD-people. Which means allowing those improvements to be distributed under the BSD-licence.

Currently, the code from BSD is BSD/GPL, but any improvements we add along the way, will be GPL. Which means the BSD-people aren't free to grab the improvements back.

The BSD-licence explicitly allows these kinds of things though, the major difference between GPL and BSD is precisely the fact that with GPL you need to publish your improved version under the same licence (if you distribute it anyway) while with BSD-code that is not a legal requirement.

The fact that it's not a legal requirement does however not mean it ain't the rigth thing to do.

It would be nice if anyone making bugfixes and/or improvements to this driver would explicitly licence those bugfixes/improvements under BSD+GPL, so that the BSD-people *would* be free to grab the improvements back.

I second other commenters though: If developers don't like the idea that others may take their code and then refuse to contribute improvements back, they'd be well-adviced to choose a licence that doesn't permit precisely that.

This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 7, 2007 5:48 UTC (Fri) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

My post was only about calling Linux developers "lame" and "selfish", which was, in my opinion, totally uncalled for. Such characterizations of Linux developers can only be based in their own actions, whereas your post shifts the focus towards BSD developers.

This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 14, 2007 4:02 UTC (Fri) by celtic_hackr (guest, #47391) [Link]

I agree that the dual licensed code can relicensed either way. The original author has already said this.

I don't see what the issue is of people complaining about not giving back.
The code is GPL. Ergo you have the source, rewrite the measly 5% or 10% or 1% that is newly added GPL and incorporate it into the original dual BSD/GPL code and then release in BSD if you want. Come on folks are we all that unimaginative?

Where's the harm, so someone might have to do a little reading and writing.
You've got the gosh darn code! This is a copyright matter not a patent matter people, you can rewrite!

Granted, I think the Linux guys should have just left the copyright alone. They're all, both sides, acting like spoiled children. Heck my toddler has better manners. But then, I raise her that way.