Linux Wireless Driver Violates BSD License? 355
bsdphx writes "After years of encouragement from the OpenBSD community for others to use Reyk Floeter's free Atheros wireless driver, it seems that the Linux world is finally listening. Unfortunately, they seem to think that they can strip the BSD license right out of it."
No, it doesn't. (Score:5, Informative)
However, until it's in Linus's tree (or even the MM tree), the violation is not by "linux", but the contributor, Jiri Slaby. [blogspot.com]
Anyway, thanks to the OpenBSD team for these great drivers. Thanks to the Linux team for including them (under the correct license).
Re:Strange (Score:4, Informative)
Let me remind you however, that this was the work of an individual who posted to a public mailing list. It hasn't been accepted into Linus's or Morton's tree.
Re:Strange (Score:4, Informative)
Someone pointed out the problem and a patch is likely on its way.
Dual licensed (Score:3, Informative)
I'll leave moral issues to another thread.
Re:Those in glass houses... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:4, Informative)
The contributor being the author of the wireless module makes this article a bit short on common sense.
First check the author of the patch, its Jiri Slaby.
Then check the copyright notice on top of the source files, there is a copyright to ... Jiri Slaby.
So an author changed the license of his own code, hit the presses!
Jury's Still Out (Score:5, Informative)
Date Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:35:05 -0200
From "Jiri Slaby"
Subject Re: [PATCH 4/5] Net: ath5k, license is GPLv2
On 8/29/07, Johannes Berg wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-08-28 at 12:00 -0400, Jiri Slaby wrote:
>
> > The files are available only under GPLv2 since now.
>
> Since the BSD people are already getting upset about (for various
> reasons among which seem to be a clear non-understanding) I'd suggest
> changing it to:
yes, please. Can somebody do it, I'm away from my box.
> + * Parts of this file were originally licenced under the BSD licence:
> + *
> > * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
> > * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
> > * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
> > *
> > * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL
> WARRANTIES
> > * WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
> > * MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
> > * ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
> > * WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
> > * ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
> > * OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
> + *
> + * Further changes to this file since the moment this notice was extended
> + * are now distributed under the terms of the GPL version two as published
> + * by the Free Software Foundation
>
> johannes
>
As mentioned before, it is the LKML, not the Rosetta stone. Things change
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't even know why this is news, Until Linus accepts it, it's some random patch submitted to the tree, tons of those are rejected daily.
The entire story and Slashdot submission is plain old FUD. if it was accepted and part of a new kernel tree I can see the story, but right now it's absolutely nothing but some random guy changed. Are we going to start getting stories submitted about what someone says on their blog now?
Legal Weirdness (Score:5, Informative)
The practical point is that the BSD code, when linked with GPL code, must adhere to the restrictions of both licenses. Most people just say that it has been relicensed under the GPL. That isn't exactly true. From most practical standpoints, the BSD license has so few restrictions that it doesn't matter, but technically that BSD code is still under the BSD license and it's requirements must be met.
So, that BSD code can easily be linked and intertwined with GPL code, but those few requirements of the BSD license must be met so long as there is any BSD code in the GPL'd derivative work.
Re:Jury's Still Out (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I would probably add another GPL poison pill to whatever I released after that, though - to require people to actually contact me and have the code relicensed if they want to hack around with the GPL. And convincing me to relicense would include convincing me that they knew exactly what they were doing and had sound reasons for needing/wanting to use the GPL instead of sticking with a more free license; I see routine licensing under the GPL as damaging, and want to do my little bit against it.
Eivind.
From the thread after TFA... (Score:3, Informative)
An Anonymous Coward wrote this by the original article....
How much you will to bet this won't instantly appear on Slashdot
;-)
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Strange (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:4, Informative)
- * GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free
- * Software Foundation.
- *
+ * This file is released under GPLv2
* Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Nick Kossifidis
*
Is BSD's "author reference" GPL's "restriction"? (Score:1, Informative)
this is just miscommunication by some people who didn't bother to ask:
the code is really dual-licensed BSD and GPL, so that people
from all sides can get the benefit. The case that wasn't.
Let's remind that GPL and BSD are different licences.
You can turn a BSD code into GPL but not vice versa
and this has some serious implications, since GPL *does not*
enforce author back reference as long as the code remains GPL;
short of "the copyright holder is FSF" itself.
It means that this is a legally valid path:
BSD code with ref. -> GPL code with ref. -> GPL code without ref.
It is not clear to me though if BSD's request for author reference
should be considered "a further restriction" under GPL's regime.
A lawyer please?
We all agree that some back reference would be nice,
if not for credit at least for documentation reasons.
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Informative)
Nope... check the first patch that appears in the article:
See the two copyright holders? They would need to give permission.
N.B. 'This file is released under GPLv2' is not really the recommended notice to add to source files. See 'How to apply these terms to your programs' at the end of the GPL text.
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:2, Informative)
Did you even read the original patch? (Score:5, Informative)
The lines without either mean that's context for the differences.
If you look at the original patch, no attribution was removed. The attribution was in the context lines.
It looks like the
Here's a link to the actual diff as provided in the original article:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/28/157 [lkml.org]
You'll also note that the dual-licensed code had the committer's copyright notice on it. In some cases it was only his notice, originally. With the data immediately available, maybe he stripped it out in a commit before this one, but they don't seem to be accusing him of that. They are mainly accusing him of ripping out the BSD license from a couple
In summary, it looks like a lot of this was nit-picking over how to actually do the license notice preservation, rather than preserving somebody's attribution. I imagine it'll be fixed up in very little time and few people will care about this in more than a day or two.
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:4, Informative)
Several people basically said Nope - can't do that. How about dual licensing?
The author replied - yes please, I'm away from my system right now - could someone do that.
(the above paraphrased..)
So in my mind - someone made a mistake, others pointed it out, and the original author asked for it to be corrected in the suggested manner.
-MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL"); (Score:4, Informative)
The original implementation was dual licensed BSD/GPL.
The submitter changed some bits and decided to pick the GPL license (both would have been allowed).
Now the submitted code is GPL-restricted.
It's a pretty pathetic thing to do, cutting off the source from any usefull changes, but perfectly legal nonetheless.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Informative)
Really? Because this is what I read from Theo [undeadly.org]: It boggles the mind. One writes legal text which says "You may not delete this", and their approach is to delete it, and splatter GPL-gizm all over it. "Screw the everyone and theirlaws, we are GNU...". He sounds like an ass to me regardless of who's right or wrong.
Re:Copyright is only good when it comes to the GPL (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/13/8422/1665
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159323&thresh
Stop this nonsense... (Score:3, Informative)
a) ath5k_hw.c
b) Original author of those files (mickflemm) later uploaded them on madwifi svn repository again but now with a different license (http://madwifi.org/changeset/2670), GPLv2 as you see (Reyk's copyright is still there of course)...
So where is the problem ???
I see no violation, only people calling other people thieves (http://www.osnews.com/story.php/18528/Linux-Deve
Also have in mind that Madwifi team have provided patches on openbsd (you can see that on openbsd cvs http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev
To summarize the whole thing IMHO is nonsense, Theo just wanted to make a point against linux developers after a serious (even copyright was removed) violation commited on openbsd's cvs (http://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/bcm43xx-dev/20
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:4, Informative)
You can correct me if I'm wrong, of course.
Re:No... It's about something a little different.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, some of them are only BSD-licensed. That's the big oops here.
Re:I wouldn't even go that far (Score:3, Informative)
Now, one of the BSDL projects I support is PostgreSQL. As your post suggests, there are a number of companies that either currently or in the past have offered proprietary versions of the software. These include Command Prompt, EnterpriseDB, Fujitsu, Green Plum, Pervasive, and SRA.
Of these, Command Prompt still has *one* proprietary add-on (but they no longer sell proprietary versions of the software), Fujitsu has dropped off the radar screen, Pervasive has given up competing with Free, and so has SRA. EnterpriseDB and Green Plum market niche products but they are hardly mainstream. In short, in a few years, pretty every proprietary version which even had a hope of being mainstream died.
In case you are wondering, EnterpriseDB offers a version of PostgreSQL with some extra Oracle compatibility. Nobody in the PostgreSQL community (myself included) wants this in our software. So we are happy to let them sell that. After all, they contribute a lot of code back to the main version. After all, they want to be competing against Oracle ($$$), not PostgreSQL (Free).
Similarly Green Plum makes a version of PostgreSQL aimed at buisness intelligence markets. They release a single-node version open source, and a version capable of parallelism under a proprietary license. The parallelism is what you pay for in BI space, so that is what they keep to themselves. Again, they want to be competing with Teradata, Oracle, and DB2 ($$$), not PostgreSQL (Free).
Pervasive tried to compete with Free and discovered it didn't work...
Where the BSDL has some drawbacks though is that it discourages businesses from being first movers in the development. The basic problem is this: You license your software, and your competitor can take that as you released it to get ahead. The GPL solves this problem, but in my view, but another option might be to approach some competitors and ask for contracts stating that for 1-2 years, they will contribute all the code thee write for it back. By then, you should have a larger community.