Tobias Weisserth wrote: >> GPL is good though if you want to force people to give back the code to >> you so that you can use it in your own dual-licensed projects. >> >> For people wanting true freedom of their code use: BSD or ISC it ;) > > The problem is the word "free". BSD people tend to interpret "free" as > "I can do whatever I want with that code! Hell, I can even make it > "unfree" again by turning it into a proprietary product!". In my > opinion, /code/ that is labeled "free" should always remain "free", no > matter what the possible actions are. This ain't the case with BSD code. > /You/ may do as you like with the code, but this doesn't make the code > "free", it just liberates your actions. BSD code is not "free" code as > such. It just implies "free" actions. It's just a matter of perspective.
It's not a matter of perspective - forced freedom is not freedom. > This whole bcw(4) discussion turned out to be a "Those GNU/Linux/GPL > fanatics don't allow us to be even more free than they claim to be!" > cryout. The funny thing is that it comes down to an OpenBSD contributor > who didn't respect the copyright of some other party by redistributing > GPL code without the GPL license through a public CVS repository. It's > amazing how a community that should actually take a defensive position > in a matter like this switches into attack mode and makes the violated > party the culprit. To ignore the possibility that it was an honest mistake is part of the problem. I won't claim to know what Marcus Glocker was thinking, but it seems quite plausible that he had every intention of removing the infringing code prior to making the bcw(4) work public, but in the excitement of some initial positive results, he simply forgot. Either way, he admitted that a mistake had been made. The reason (as I see it - again, I won't speak for anyone else) that the OpenBSD community came down so hard on the bcm43xx dev is due to the way he pursued the issue. There was absolutely no good reason to initially address the issue on a public mailing list and CC'd to a bunch of other people. If the initial mail had been sent privately to Marcus, then he could/would have removed the infringing code (or perhaps the entire driver temporarily). He could have then issued a public statement on *why* he did it (which would have satisfied the need to have it out in public that some of the code wasn't actually BSD licensed). Had it happened that way, everybody wins, and we don't have all of this fuss over it. RW
