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I read the whole thread, and about half of the useless comments on here -- the fact that I'm writing this is probably a waste of my time as some hot head is only going to mod it down, but I'm going to write it anyway.

Let's start with some questions here:

1. How many of you have written code before? I'm talking real code, not hello world.

2. How many of you have tried to piss around with CVS on a semi large project?

3. How many of you have tried to reverse engineer a driver before?

Okay, now given my feeble experience, I can tell you that it's pretty easy to: a) temporarily use someone else's code for something you plan to rewrite later on (especially while you're still learning how something works); and b) start committing half-finished stuff to a CVS repository not thinking anyone's going to see it.

Which leads to another question: 4. How many of you regularly sift through CVS repositories? -- yeah, probably not many, you know why? because the vast majority of people that checkout from public CVS repositories (with the intention to look at code) are the very same guys who are committing to them. So yes, technically they are public, but effectively they're not so public. Don't believe me? Go find a public CVS server and see if you can figure out how to get anything useful out of it. Unless you already know what you're doing you're going to find it to be a fruitless task.

The fact of the matter is that some dude made the mistake of committing a bunch of work-in-progress code not thinking that anyone was going to see it and freak out about it. I highly doubt there was any intention to 'steal' code, as the OpenBSD guys are pretty anal about eliminating as much GPL code as possible (and I can only imagine this fiasco will make them all the more jaded toward it).

Should the code have been in CVS and not properly attributed as GPL code? No, probably not, and I bet had they just sent the guy an email asking for proper recognition he would have given it -- and why wouldn't he?

Why was it committed? Seems to make sense to me that it allows other people working on that particular chunk of code to see it and change it -- MAYBE -- even for the purpose of encouraging other developers to help replace the temporarily borrowed code.

Certainly, had I been the guy who had written the borrowed code, I would have at least made some kind of attempt to find out what was going on before jumping to crazy conclusions and creating a stupid soap opera in a public forum.

I don't particularly agree with Theo's response in it's entirety, but it's his developer, and it's his prerogative (as project leader) to stand up for the guy.

Michael Buesch should have apologized after the initial misstep of making a public mockery of the guy (which was unnecessary), and it would have ended the whole preposterous thing before it had a chance to escalate to such a ridiculous level.