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)
In reply to: This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right by elanthis
Parent article: Relicensing: what's legal and what's right

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.

to post comments

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.