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."
Those in glass houses... (Score:4, Insightful)
Those in glass houses shouldnt throw stones
Re:Strange (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly is this article about?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks more like some yutz decided that he didn't like the BSD licence and went in and changed all the licences to GPLv2, in the files, and didn't do anything else.
Honestly, I can't complain, as long as the copyright notices are kept, and unchanged, it is acceptable (someone posted thsi further down).
Nonetheless, someone going in, and doing nothing but removing the BSD licencing on every file (or at least the first 4 or 5, I didn't look through the whole thing), and replcaing it with "this code is now under GPLv2", seems somewhat childish, more like a tantrum than anything else.
Re:Strange (Score:5, Insightful)
The original BSD vaersion is still out there.
Just like it would if the code was taken properitary.It's a bit rich to deny people to keep their own changes proprietary, wouldn't you say?
Except that's what the GPL tries to do. It's removing freedom.
And that's what many of us BSDers are against. We want our software to keep freedom. Including the freedom of future developers to keep their own changes private, or get paid for them. Thereby, we also allow the end users the freedom to buy those changes - a freedom they wouldn't have if the code was GPLed, because the incentive to make the changes wouldn't be there.
As an example, we have Apples operating system, partially made on code I wrote. And I'm a very happy user of it, even though I (or rather, my employer) had to pay for the extra stuff Apple has added. The ability to do so is a freedom I have partially gotten from having released my software under the BSD license.
Eivind.
It's about dividing the communities.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The trick is that we have to not be divided and work together sensibly.
Disparity between ideology and practice (Score:2, Insightful)
> of a license that allows code to be used in closed projects. It always was a specious argument, but it's looking
> all the more absurd today.
Doesn't this always tend to happen with organized religion? The "our ideology is better/truer/stronger than yours so we are superior and can condescend/oppress/forcibly convert" syndrome?
(Flashes on the surrealistic scene of the Romans watching RMS fight Theo de Raadt in the Colosseum...)
Re:Welll (Score:3, Insightful)
I fully agree with the mods decision to mark you as a troll on that basis.
Programming for windows is subject to the same legal worries as far as licenses are concerned, dont kid yourself that its only an open source issue.
Yes, you need to put thought into any license you release things under - Does it suit your requirements for one?
If not, thats the wrong license to use - and theres nothing stopping you from defining a license of your own which does meet them
Re:It's about dividing the communities.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I myself write mostly copyleft software, but if the OpenBSD or any other important project asked for it to be relicensed under BSD, I would certainly dual-license the software.
All of this senseless bickering is pointless. We as open source and free software developers have most of our goals in common. Let's pool our resources here and work together towards those common goals rather than having all of this stupid infighting.
You all need to realize that this is exactly what Microsoft and other companies that would like to see us shut up want. Keep us divided, keep us fighting because, and this is going to sound cliche -- but it's truee -- united we stand, divided we fall.
Re:It's about dividing the communities.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't so much a disagreement about how "free" is defined; it is more about who the target of "free" is. The BSD-style folks focus on programmers; the GPL-style folks future end-users. Both want the code to be "free" (can do whatever they desire with the code) to their target.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Claiming any particular licence (BSD/GPL) to be superior is like asserting that cars are superior to helicopters. In far too many cases, the licences are dragged in to try to justify a bad argument, and the fault lies with both camps. GNU and BSD zealots alike adopt Talibanesque positions that do nothing but harm to the community.
This story should have been a simple clear-cut case it weren't for a small rabble-rousing group. Funnily enough, Theo posted a fairly decent and non-inflamatory respones in the early discussions. This is in stark contrast to the earlier GPL case (mentioned in your post) where his reaction was indefensible.
Incidentally, the BSD licence infringement has already taken place. That happened as soon as the author distributed the code with the licence stripped from it. Doesn't matter whether or not it hit a main-stream kernel. As soon as he made it available to others, distribution kicked-in. That said, the author has a case to answer for but certainly not the entire Linux community the "OMG LINUX STOLE OUR CODE!" crowd would have us think.
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's about Theo and company getting their panties in a wad over any percieved "stealing" of their
codebase from the OpenBSD tree and relicensing it under the GPL. What the dummies didn't get
was that the contribution and re-release of the code was under the GPL V2 by the original author
which has the right to do whatever he damn well pleases with it if he's not breaching the Copyrights
of other contributors to a given piece in the process of relicensing it.
If the original author did this, Theo and company need to put a brown paper bag over their heads...
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Does Jiri Slaby have the right to change the license on Reyk Floeter's code?
We don't care about whether the license on the patch itself was changed, but the license from the code he borrowed.
Re:Dual licensed (Score:3, Insightful)
It is possible to dual-license a piece of code. In the case of this kind of stuff, the BSD license is much more permissive than the GPL as to what you can do with the code, so one could arguably take the piece of software under the BSD license and "close" it, developing proprietary software on top of it.
As the new code is a derivative work, and the new modifications are under GPL v2 (something which is possible as long as you maintain the original caveats along with the original code), those aren't easily appropriated, and become "viral". If one sought to extend that piece of software, he would have to do it under the GPL terms, or find the original code in OpenBSD and fork from that.
Luis R. Rodriguez in the LKML seems to imply (this is the part I'm not certain about) that for all practical purposes, dual-licensing in this case -and all other similar cases inside the kernel- means "GPL v2 licensing", since the GPL is by far more restrictive on what you can do with the code. This interpretation would be important if the linux kernel code evolved further than the OpenBSD code, since one would rather use the former than the latter, and thus the issue would arise. Otherwise, it would be much safer just to use the BSD-licensed code.
No... It's about something a little different... (Score:3, Insightful)
They were guilty of the very thing they're accusing the Linux crowd of back a while
back and the Linux crowd handled it rather nicely and helpfully, but Theo went ballistic
and basically got all bent out of shape indicating that they weren't really violating
the GPL licensing on a kernel driver (they were, but...) and so forth.
Now, we see a percieved violation being "observed" by Theo and Company
and in reality, the people in the discussion thread all bent out of shape over it weren't
paying close attention. The original author did the change- which is legit all the way
around.
This isn't about dividing BSD and Linux. This is about Theo and some of the OpenBSD
crowd being a little more mouthy than usual and simply going off half-cocked.
Nothing new here- move along.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
which is why theo got pissed if you read the whole thread - he didn't like that the
driver developer posted to the whole list & cc'ed legal people instead of just writing
the actual committer directly and working it out between them,
The inflammitory attitude, in his eyes, was the approach taken in reporting the violation,
and he in his thoughts responded in kind. so in that sense a calm response here would be consistent
with what he sees is the way to go about things..
Re:It's about dividing the communities.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Strange (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's what many of us BSDers are against. We want our software to keep freedom.
Re:-MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL"); (Score:2, Insightful)
> from any usefull changes, but perfectly legal nonetheless.
As a pro-BSD and anti-GPL guy, I don't like this either, but I think it's instructive.
First, I think it demonstrates the double standard going on in the license battle. The BSD license is explicitly supposed to allow this, and their reaction simply shows that they aren't so dedicated to the spirit of the license as they like to pretend.
Second, I think it ultimately demonstrates the failures of the GPL. Now that the driver is under GPL, enhancements made to the BSD-licensed version don't automatically propagate to it; they have to be manually incorporated. The converse applies; the GPL modifications don't propagate to the BSD version without manual incorporation, and since that incorporation would carry the GPL, it won't happen. This is effectively a code fork, and as ESR has quite rightly pointed out (thought not in so few words) "code forks are bad". Clearly, the GPL community has not historically done so well on a wireless driver, so I'd bet the BSD version is eventually going to eclipse the GPL version. This evidences the simple fact that the GPL doesn't attract high-quality developers as readily as a BSD licensed project does.
I don't think the code is cut off from useful changes; I think it's actually a good idea to do this kind of apples and apples comparison of the two licenses. Which version ultimately wins and why? I'm betting on BSD, because I think experienced professional developers - the kind most qualified to enhance and extend a wireless driver - dislike the GPL and will avoid it when possible.
Re:No... It's about something a little different.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Did you even read the original patch? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, so far as I am aware, header files cannot be copyrighted (at least in the U.S.), so the licensing of them, and thus the complaint, is moot (at least in the U.S.).
This is one point I remember from the SCO v. IBM litigation. SCO was accusing IBM of having included the ELF header files in Linux; however, it as pointed out on Groklaw that header files are not copyrightable, so it was not a valid accusation; or something along those lines.
Some info from Groklaw: (formatting added)
Any how...IANAL - so check with one that is to know for sure; but that's my thought. Take it with a grain of salt.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey you may not like the guy, and he may very well be an ass, but I gotta admit, that's pretty goddam funny.
Re:It's about dividing the communities.... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) BSD: This is good code, we want people to be able to use it, maybe it will work to our advantage, and we want the copyright to stay clear so people who modify our code can't accidentally claim copyright and sue others who started with our code.
2) FSF: The end user should be able to hack their devices we'll tempt device manufacturers with good code whose license requires the manufacturer to keep the device and code open.
3) Linus?: I want the best code available for people to use, which means giving away my code, but also getting the improvements of others back.
Re:Strange (Score:2, Insightful)
BSD preserves the right to restrict freedoms plus all the other rights GPL preserves.
GPL restricts the right to restrict freedoms, and otherwise preserves the same rights as BSD.
In other words, the only freedom GPL takes away is the ability to restrict the freedoms of others.
Arguing that we should have the freedom to restrict everyone else's freedom is like arguing that we should tolerate intolerance or else we ourselves are intolerant. It's sophistry that pays no mind whatever to the content of the question.
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now a Linux developer has been seen doing something that at first glance looks worse, so I suppose we can expect another flamewar even if it turns out to be no big deal.
It was under the GPL that they used it.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So they removed mention. The provided the code back, under the gplv2, which the original authors could then include into theirs.
AVAILABLE under dual license doesn't mean you accept both. They abided by the terms of the GPL.
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad tact perhaps, but not a violation.
What exactly would be the point of using the GPL *AND* the BSD license together? Then you'd just use BSD, right?
Re:Strange (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No... It's about something a little different.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing the same thing in the other direction (including GPL-licensed code in a BSD-licensed project) is a no-no, by the way. The GPL has additional requirements that the BSD license doesn't satisfy.
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
The BSD project has it available under EITHER license. EITHER/OR.
This isn't exactly true, though. Some of the files are available under a dual license. Others, it seems, aren't.
Look at the copyright notice being removed from, e.g., ath5k_hw.c:
* Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Nick Kossifidis
* Copyright (c) 2007 Jiri Slaby
*
- * 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.
- *
No mention of a GPL dual license in there.
Re:No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes! That's the issue exactly (well, analogously). The original software permitted either license. Jiri removed all the BSD bits, including the copyrights of the other contributors. Jiri's kernal submission is an attempt at an exclusively GPL fork. This fork is indistinguishable in name from the original BSD-licensed code. IMHO, if you're going to fork something, at least give it a different name so that you can tell the difference.
There are now, effectively, two different branches: The BSD branch, from which future changes may be freely merged to the GPL-only branch; and the potentially illicit GPL-only branch. Changes submitted directly to the GPL-only branch are doomed to be stuck there forevermore, per the restrictions of the GPL. How are developers to know which branch is which when they have the same name? Furthermore, this fork will balkanize future development, forcing developers to choose whether they wish to submit patches only to the GPL fork, or to both (by way of submitting first to the BSD branch).
Fundamentally, the problem seems to be that you can't logically have something be *both* GPL and BSD. Draw a Venn diagram. The GPL forbids free reuse in source or binary form. BSD forbids ripping out the copyright notice of the contributors.
slight of mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, now, that's a truly fabulous slight-of-mind. Kudos. But tell me, is 1st amendment a reference to first post? Under this theory of law, you really want to get there first.
The GPL actually functions like a 1st amendment which states that America grants certain rights to Americans (some in the guise of restrictions on restrictions), and we're going to bomb any country which doesn't follow suit back to the stone age.
Tell me, wouldn't the 1st amendment be better if it was more honest about the carpet bombing of contrary views back to the stone age? Subject only to available funds?
I admire the GPL empire, but personally I choose not to live there. I think the GPL is the right choice for systems and the wrong choice for technologies. If I invented a new network protocol (Internet 3, since Internet 2 is already registered) I would license the implementation under BSD, and the compliance suite under GPL. A protocol is worthless if people don't steal enough of the original code to make everything work together. Likewise, the protocol is worthless if people Balkanize compliance with the edge cases. I see two different purposes, and two different licences with respect to those purposes, neither of which involves any recursive viral calculus to comprehend.
Good summary of what really happened (Score:1, Insightful)
Subject: Re: Linux Driver Violates BSD License
From: "Constantine A. Murenin" [...]
BTW, since this is misc@openbsd.org, people might be interested to
know about the history of the licensing terms of ath(4) in OpenBSD.
OpenBSD's ath(4) consists of two parts:
1. a driver, copyrighted by Sam Leffler of FreeBSD
2. a HAL, copyrighted by Reyk Floeter of OpenBSD
What Theo explained above concerns the OpenHAL code. OpenHAL is the
Linux name for madwifi driver connected with reyk's entirely free and
open source ath(4) HAL code.
Sam originally put a dual BSD/GPL licence onto his driver code.
Reyk always put a BSD-style licence onto his HAL code.
At the time OpenHAL was forked from OpenBSD, OpenBSD's ath(4)
_driver_, but _not the HAL_, was dual licensed.
As already mentioned, OpenBSD's ath(4) HAL, written by Reyk, was
_never_ dual licensed. See the history on
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev
Few months ago, Sam changed the licence of _his_ code to a 2-clause
BSD licence. Sam had every right to do so, because he was and is the
only copyright holder of that code, as the licence header of the
driver file indicates, in FreeBSD, OpenBSD etc.
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev
http://www.freshbsd.org/2007/06/06?project=freebs
Reyk committed Sam's changes to OpenBSD the same day, so now,
OpenBSD's ath(4) is _entirely_ BSD-licensed, with no alternative
licensing available.
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev
http://www.freshbsd.org/2007/06/06?project=openbs
However, what Jiri Slaby does in his diff is simply outrageous. He
changes the licensing terms of the code _he does not own_ _at his own
will_. A clear copyright violation.
As I can see from that diff on LKML, Jiri Slaby doesn't even have his
name as the copyright holder in many of the ath5k files that he tries
to change the licensing terms of. In other files, he is not the only
author, so he can't change the terms unless _all_ other copyright
holders agree to the new terms.
I'm very upset that certain people think they can get away with such a
blatant disrespect of the copyright law. I trust that this violation
won't be left unnoticed.
What I personally don't understand, however, is that if Jiri Slaby
thinks that he can simply change the licence of someone's code without
explicit agreement of that someone, then why on earth does he think
that changing the licence to a more restrictive one will offer him any
protections, as, presumably following his logic, other people could
later change the licence to whatever they feel like, in the very same
illegal manner as he did in the first place. IMHO, that is the real
question that he has to answer.
Constantine.