Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 30th Sep 2007 13:40 UTC, submitted by dylansmrjones
SFLC has released a code analysis of the infamous ath5k driver in Linux. SFLC has also - in the aftermath of the OpenBSD-Team vs. Linux-Team 'License Flame War' - released a paper on what 'copyrightable' means, as well as one on proper usage of non-GPL'ed code in GPL'ed projects. All as part of guidance for developers wishing to use permissive licensed code in GPL'ed projects.
Groklaw naturally also has a take on this.
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Member since:
2005-10-13
This is about ethics, not law.
I agree, that's what I was talking about as I really haven't followed the situation closely enough to know what the legal situation is.
Driver 1 is licensed under BSD. Somebody converts to GPL. We now have 2 almost identical codebases, with 2 licenses. One is BSD, the other is GPL.
GPL or BSD, both are open source. GPL projects can use BSD code. BSD projects can not use GPL code.
You forgot about the other someone else who integrates Driver 1 into their proprietary product, making 3 almost identical codebases. No one can use the third project except for the proprietary vendor, who says "Thank you for working your ass off for the last years. We take it from here. KTHX."
None of the BSD people seem to have any problem with this, and in fact they seem to advertise it as a success story - they're happy that other people are able to use their code. So it seems like a strange little disconnect that they have such a problem with the GPL version, although I'll admit the situations aren't exactly the same.
Edited 2007-09-30 18:43