OSNews > Thread > "RE[5]: re" by stestagg

OpenBSD bcw: Possible GPL Violation Issues

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 6th Apr 2007 13:14 UTC, submitted by detonator

"I, Michael Buesch, am one of the maintainers of the GPL'd Linux wireless LAN driver for the Broadcom chip (bcm43xx). The Copyright holders of bcm43xx (which includes me) want to talk to you, OpenBSD bcw developers, about possible GPL license and therefore copyright violations in your bcw driver. We believe that you might have directly copied code out of bcm43xx (licensed under GPL v2), without our explicit permission, into bcw (licensed under BSD license)." The entire thread can be found here.

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RE[5]: re

by stestagg on Fri 6th Apr 2007 18:04 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: re"

Member since:
2006-06-03

No, Anyone is free to define their own license. The success of the GPL is a result of 3rd party adoption NOT someone enforcing their beliefs.

Ste.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 5

RE[6]: re

by binarycrusader on Sat 7th Apr 2007 03:55 in reply to "RE[5]: re"

Member since:
2005-07-06

The success of the GPL is a result of 3rd party adoption NOT someone enforcing their beliefs.

I'm sure Stallman would say it is successful because of the "freedoms" it guarantees (enforces in my view), not its 3rd party adoption...

Edited 2007-04-07 04:06

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE[7]: re

by archiesteel on Sat 7th Apr 2007 20:20 in reply to "RE[6]: re"

Member since:
2005-07-02

You miss the point. A license is only successful if it is used. The fact that it is adopted by a *lot* of projects is why the GPL is successful.

Developers choose the GPL. Who are you to say that they shouldn't? It's their code, they hold the copyright on it, it's up to them to decide how it can or can't be redistributed. There's little else to say about this...

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 4