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

Posted Sep 4, 2007 19:41 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
In reply to: This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right by JoeBuck
Parent article: Relicensing: what's legal and what's right

In theory, you are right, sharing development would be the right thing.

In this particular case I doubt it would happen. There is a lot of bad blood between the OpenBSD and the Linux wireless communities. (public harassment of Intel for doing *Linux* wireless by Theo, campaign against OLPC because the wireless stuff was not being opened fast enough, shameless procrastinating when OpenBSD was caught misappropriating Linux GPL code, etc). OpenBSD wireless advocacy is lynch first, think later, never present excuses.

Theo only claimed brotherhood once it become clear he had no legal leg to stand on. There can be no doubt his preference would have been to publicly immolate his "brothers". Pretty suicidal to bully when your licensing model makes you rely on third-party goodwill if you want my opinion. Especially now the Linux wireless people seem to have settled on a wireless stack at last and should start pumping drivers.

One of the first feedbacks on the proposed patch was to play nice with OpenBSD. However that was before the public smear campaign I doubt anyone feels ready to tell the Linux wireless devs how to license their code now.