"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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Member since:2006-01-03
Probably but the "damage" had already been done by the miles long CC list. It should have been the GPL guys talking to that developer off list, in private, period. It could have all been over and done with and no harm done. Two wrongs don't make a right, and both sides became culpable but it didn't need to happen if the GPL folks would have done the right thing from the start.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-03-14
They Should of contacted Marcus and worked out out that way, Development could of continued on "both" drivers.
BUT Michael Buesch's initial email was obviously designed to publicly attack Marcus.
The CC's:
John Linville
Greg Kroah-Hartman
bcm43xx <Mailing list>
linux-wireless <Mailing list>
license-violation <Mailing list>
It was also sent to other OpenBSD developers including Theo de Raadt..
This entire thing could of been handled directly & privately between Michael, Marcus and the bcm43xx team instead of posting it on multiple mailing lists to publicly humiliate him, inevitably forcing him to delete the code from CVS.
Again, It wasn't handled well.. And now.. Apparent by this damn OSNews topic and other articles it's now way out of control.
Edited 2007-04-06 20:27
Member since:2005-07-06
They Should of contacted Marcus and worked out out that way, Development could of continued on "both" drivers.
Marcus put GPLed code into a public repository and relicensed it without discussing it with anyone first. It was discussed in the way it should have been, with all the right people who should know.
BUT Michael Buesch's initial email was obviously designed to publicly attack Marcus.
No. That's Theo's version of the whole thing in order to try and have something to say on the matter. If the whole thing had stayed on subject and Marcus and everyone else could have discussed what to do, either removing the code or rewriting it, then this could have been solved with minimum fuss.
This entire thing could of been handled directly & privately between Michael, Marcus and the bcm43xx team instead of posting it on multiple mailing lists to publicly humiliate him
Marcus didn't discuss this first before using GPLed driver code, so this was the correct way to handle it. As Michael stated in his e-mail I referenced above, if Marcus had discussed this privately before using the code then he would have discussed it in private e-mails if he so wished.
As it is, there's nothing wrong with discussing this on a mailing list and with others, which is where it should be discussed.
inevitably forcing him to delete the code from CVS.
No one forced him to do anything, but the code in question is GPLed code relicensed - which is a clear violation. If the discussion had stayed on topic, without rants from Theo, then Marcus could have discussed more rationally what to do - whether that be deleting the code or rewriting it.
Michael even gave him the option of relicensing:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/1587
"I don't understand your reaction, really. If you were really interrested in doing a Broadcom wireless driver for openbsd, you would have chosen the option to relicense some code (and therefore drop only that code which I refuse to relicense)"
He didn't want Marcus to drop the code, and offered a sensible resolution.
Again, It wasn't handled well.. And now.. Apparent by this damn OSNews topic and other articles it's now way out of control.
That's funny. The only reason why this has blown up is because Theo insists on prolonging the whole thing by implying that everyone is calling Marcus a thief. Marcus was never called a thief, and everything he came up with in response was totally irrelevant.
If anyone has prolonged this and embarrassed and scared off Marcus Glocker, it's Theo de Radtt. As usual. There was no problem here at all - but Theo's reacted and gone off on one.
Member since:
2007-02-23
If the OpenBSD folks would prefer to handle the details of this situation in private
They could have handled this in private. After the first post Theo could have sent mail:
"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We should talk about this in private to resolve the issues. We'll let everybody know how that turns out."
and there'd be no bruhaha. No need to admit fault even, just a simple statement and it could have gone to a small private group of people.
Instead, we have Drama! Feh! None of that needed to happen.