Re: Wasting our Freedom
On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 06:29:48AM -0500, Marco Peereboom wrote: Now if they'd fix the copyright message to only mention Reyk all would be good. It *does* mention Reyk, if you would bother to look. The thing which Theo is kvetching about, and which apparently is enough to cause the *BSD zombies to start attacking without actually _checking_ _for_ _themselves_ is whether or not Jiri and Nick did enough to work so they should have their names listed in the headers. In other words, all of the megabytes and megabhytes of flamewar is over these two lines: * Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Nick Kossifidis [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Copyright (c) 2007 Jiri Slaby [EMAIL PROTECTED] Petty, isn't it? Let's just say it's b.s. like this which is why, 16 years ago, I decided to work with Linux instead of BSD. - Ted P.S. And yes, before those two lines is: * Copyright (c) 2004-2007 Reyk Floeter [EMAIL PROTECTED] and after those two lines is the BSD permission notice.
Re: Wasting our Freedom
On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 01:18:05PM +0200, Hannah Schroeter wrote: So for code which is single-licensed under a BSD license, someone can create a new derived work, and redistribute it under a more restrictive license --- either one as restrictive as NetApp's (where no one is allowed to get binary unless they are a NetApp customer, or source only after signing an NDA), or a GPL license. It is not a relicencing, per se, since the original version of the file is still available under the original copyright; it is only the derived work which is under the more restrictive copyright. No. The derivative work altogether has a *mixed* license. BSD/ISC for the parts that are original, the other (restrictive, GPL, whatever) license for the modifications/additions. Yes, agreed. I was being sloppy. In actual practice, the GPL is more restrictive, aod so the terms of the GPL are what tend to have more effect, but you are absolutely correct. *If* you choose to distribute source along with the binaries, the part of the source that's original is BSD/ISC licensed even in the derivative work (though one may put *the additions/modifications* under restrictive conditions, e.g. of commercial non-disclosure type source licensing). Yes, although actually, the place where the BSD license must be honored is in a binary distribution, since the BSD license and copyright attribution must be distributed as part of the binary distribution. (Even Microsoft does this when they use BSD code.) For a source distribution, retaining the copyright attribution and permission statement in the comments is sufficient to meet the BSD license requirements, and since the open source world normally deals mostly with source, we sometimes get sloppy with how we phrase things. Regards, - Ted
Re: Wasting our Freedom
On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 02:55:54PM +0200, Claudio Jeker wrote: Wohoho! Slow here please. NDA have nothing to do with licenses and especially with copyright. NetApp even though their stuff is under their copyright and license does hopefully not modify the copyrights of imported BSD/ISC code. That would be against the law and I hope their leagal departement is smart enough to not do this mistake especially because the BSD license those not hinder them in any way. Yes, NDA doesn't have anything to do with license and copyrights, and I never said that NetApp is modfying a copyright; but they *are* putting a proprietary copyright license on their modifications --- which is exactly what the Linux wireless developers had proposed to do (modulo mistakes about removing copyright notices and attribution which have already been acknowledged and fixed), except instead of using a proprietary license which means you'll never see the WAFL sources (at least without signing an NDA and acknowledging their proprietary copyright license over their changes), it will be under a GPL license with which you have philosophical differences, but still allows you to see the source. Finally most companies know they benefit from open source and give often the code changes most likely bugfixes to this imported code back. Unlike most GPL people we're happy with that especially we do not require them to release any of their own code. Sure their WAFL file system is cool but even in my wildest dreams I would not require them to publish their code just because the used some of my code. So why are you complaining when people want to use some of your code and put the combined work under a mixed BSD/GPL license? You can't use WAFL; you can't use the GPL'ed enhancements. What's the difference between those two cases? Somehow a mixed BSD/Proprietary license is better? - Ted
Re: Wasting our Freedom
On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 08:20:39AM -0700, David Schwartz wrote: Theodore Tso writes: Now, you don't need a licence from the original author to use the derived work. The author of the derived work only needs a licence from the original author to create a derived work. Do you think Microsoft users have licences from authors of the works MS Windows etc. are based on? :-) I didn't write the above; please be careful with your attributions. - Ted
Re: Wasting our Freedom
On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 09:23:41PM +0200, Claudio Jeker wrote: Because they put their copyright plus license on code that they barely modified. If they would have added substantial work into the OpenHAL code and by doing that creating something new I would not say much. Number 1, some of the Linux wireless developers screwed up earlier versions. No denying that, the problems were pointed out during the patch reviewed problem, AND THEY WERE FIXED. Number 2, if you take a look at their latest set of changes (which have still not been accepted), the HAL code is under a pure BSD license (ath5k_hw.c). Other portions are dual licensed, but not the HAL --- if people would only take a look at http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/linville/wireless-dev.git;a=tree;f=drivers/net/wireless;h=2d6caeba0924c34b9539960b9ab568ab3d193fc8;hb=everything And yet, the BSD folks seem to continue to nurse the above mantra (which was true, but quickly corrected) combined with the and the Linux folks aren't listening, which is manifestly not true. We might not agree with everything you are saying, and we might think you're being highly hypocritical, but we are listening. All the comercial code I have ever seen did not do this stunt of adding a new copyright and license to barely modified files. Perhaps the evil companies have more ethics or better understanding of copyright. In the original BSD 4.3 code, if I recall correctly, /bin/true was 12 lines of ATT copyright and the standard this is proprietary non-published trade secret legalease with the standard threats of bazillions and bazillions of damage due to ATT's irreparable harm if the file was ever disclosed followed by exit 0. :-) Personally, I find that issues of copyright are much more easily discussed if people keep a sense of balance and humor. - Ted
Re: Wasting our Freedom
On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 03:06:37PM -0700, Can E. Acar wrote: The only remaining issue is whether Nick Jiri have enough original contributions to the code to be added to the Copyright. I believe this needs to be resolved between Reyk and Nick and Jiri. The main reason of Theo's message, linked earlier, was the lack of response on this issue. It seems that the SFLC is dismissing this issue, and thus stalling its resolution by the developers. OK, so all of this flaming, and digging up of licenses ripped off, and chaff thrown up in the air, and moaning and bewailing about theft, is now down to these two lines regarding Nick and Jiri: * Copyright (c) 2004-2007 Reyk Floeter [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Nick Kossifidis [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Copyright (c) 2007 Jiri Slaby [EMAIL PROTECTED] [snip rest of BSD license] It's under a BSD license; what material difference does those two lines make, for goodness sake? It's under a BSD license, so it's not like anything won't be given back. Whether or not they have made enough for changes is really a question for the lawyers, and may differ from one jurisdiction to another --- but whether or not they have now, or maybe will not make until later --- does it really make a difference? Who gets hurt if someone gets they get a bit more credit than they deserve? Certainly the most important thing is that Reyk is given proper credit, right? - Ted
Re: Wasting our Freedom
On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 10:39:26PM +0200, Hannah Schroeter wrote: The most questionable legal advice in this thread was by Theo de Raadt who claimed choosing one licence for _dual-licenced_ code was illegal... JFTR, I do *not* think that that assessment was questionable. Unless the dual-licensing *explicitly* allows relicensing, relicensing is forbidden by copyright law. The dual-licensing allows relicensing only if that's *explicitly* stated, either in the statement offering the alternative, or in one of the licenses. Neither GPL nor BSD/ISC allow relicensing in their well-known wordings. If you think that's questionable, you should at least provide arguments (and be ready to have your interpretation of the law and the licenses tested before court). Hannah, What is going on whenever someone changes a code is that they make a derivative work. Whether or not you can even make a derivative work, and under what terms the derivitive work can be licensed, is strictly up to the license of the original. For example, the BSD license says: Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met Note the with or without modification. This is what allows people to change BSD licensed code and redistribute said changes. The conditions specified by the BSD license do not mention anything about licening terms --- just that if you meet these three conditions, you are allowed to redistribute them. So for example, this is what allows Network Appliances to take BSD code, change it, and add a restrictive, proprietary copyright. So for code which is single-licensed under a BSD license, someone can create a new derived work, and redistribute it under a more restrictive license --- either one as restrictive as NetApp's (where no one is allowed to get binary unless they are a NetApp customer, or source only after signing an NDA), or a GPL license. It is not a relicencing, per se, since the original version of the file is still available under the original copyright; it is only the derived work which is under the more restrictive copyright. Now, the original copyright can say that you aren't allowed to do this; for example, the GPL says that you are not allowed to add any restrictions on the copyright license of any derived works of GPL'ed code. This is why some BSD partisans claim that their license is more free; the BSD license allows people to add more restrictive copyright license terms on derived works. OK, what about dual licensed works? The specific wording of the dual licensing is that you can use *either* license. That means, you can treat code as if only using the BSD license applied, or only if the GPL license applied. That is, the end-user can redistribute if either the conditions required by the BSD license *or* the GPL license applied. But we've already shown that the BSD license allows the creation of a derived work with a more restrictive license --- such as the GPL. But don't take my word for it; the Software Freedom Law Center has issued advice, pro bono, written by lawyers about how this can be done. If you want, feel free get your own lawyers and ask them to provide formal legal advice. A difference is, GPL requires it under every circumstance. BSD does not, indeed. But how should one expect it from *OSS* people that even *they* don't give back? Do you really want to put yourself on the same level as closed-source companies? The problem with your argument is that BSD folks have claimed that the BSD license is morally superior --- more free than the GPL --- because you don't have to give back (or more formally, create a derivitive work with a copyright license more restrictive than the BSD). If that is true, it is the absolute height of hypocrisy to suddenly start complaining when code is restricted via an another open source license such as the GPL, but not complain when NetApp uses BSD code to make million and millions of dollars without giving anything of substantial value back. At least in the case of GPL'ed code you still can look at the changes and decide how and whether you to reimplement them. Why don't you go and try asking NetApp for sources to WAFL, and claim that they have moral duty to give the code back, and see how quickly you get laughed out of the office? - Ted
Re: Wasting our Freedom
On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 02:17:53AM -0700, J.C. Roberts wrote: Look at what you are saying from a different perspective. Let's say someone took the linux kernel source from the official repository, removed the GPL license and dedicated the work to public domain or put it under any other license, and for kicks back-dated the files so they are older than the originals. Then they took this illegal license removal copy of your code and put it in a public repository somewhere. Ok, suppose someone did (precisely) this. Then the person to be upset with would be the people who did this, not the people behind the official repository. Some folks seem to be unfortuntaely blaming the people who run the official repository. Look, it's perhaps a little understandable that people in the *BSD world might not understand that the Linux development community is huge, and not understand that the people who work on madwifi.org, the core kernel community, and the FSF, are distinct, and while they might interact with each other, one part of the community can't dictate what another part of the community does. You wouldn't want us to conflate all of the security faults of say, NetBSD with OpenBSD, just because it came from a historically similar code base and besides all you *BSD folks are all the same --- if you don't want a bad reputation, why don't you police yourselves? Would you not say this is unreasonable? If so, would you kindly not do the same thing to the Linux community? Secondly, it looks like people are getting worked up about two different things, and in some cases it looks like the two things are getting conflated. The first thing is a screw-up about attribution and removal of the BSD license text, and that is one where the SFLC has already issued advice that this is bad ju-ju, and that the BSD license text must remain intact. The second case which seems to get people upset is that there are people who are taking BSD code, and/or GPL/BSD dual licensed code, and adding code additions/improvements/changes under a GPL-only license. This is very clearly legal, just as it is clearly legal for NetApp to take the entire BSD code base, add proprietary changes to run on their hardware and to add a propietary, patent-encrusted WAFL filesystem, and create a codebase which is no longer available to the BSD development community. The first case was clearly a legal foul, whereas the second case is legally O.K (whether the GPL or NetApp propietary license is involved). However, people are conflating these two cases, and using words like theft and copyright malpractice, without being clear which case they are talking about. If we grant that the first is bad, and is being rectified before it gets merged into the mainline kernel, can we please drop this? If you are truely offended that working pre-merge copies of the files with the incorrect copyright statements still exist on the web, feel free to send requests to madwifi.org, the Wayback Archive, and everywhere else to stamp them out --- but can you please leave the Linux Kernel Mailing List out of it, please? As far as the second case is concerned, while it is clearly _legally_ OK, there is a question whether it is _morally_ a good idea. And this is where a number of poeple in the Linux camp are likely to accuse the *BSD people who are making a huge amount of fuss of being hypocrites. After all, most BSD people talk about how they are *proud* that companies like NetApp can take the BSD code base, and make improvements, and it's OK that those improvements never make it back to the BSD code base. In fact, these same *BSD folks talk about how this makes the BSD license more free than the GPL. Yet, when some people want to take BSD code (and let's assume that proper attributions and copyright statements are retained, just as I'll assume that NetApp also preserved the same copyright statements and attributions), and make improvements that are under the GPL, at least some *BSD developers are rising up and claiming theft! Um, hello? Why is it OK for NetApp to do it, and not for some Linux wireless developers to do precisely the same thing? Is it because the GPL license is open source? At least that way you can see the improvements (many of them would have been OS-specific anyway, since the BSD and Linux kernel infrastructures are fundamentally different), and then reimplement yourself in the case of NetApp, you don't even get to **see** the sources to the WAFL filesystem; they are, after all, under a proprietary copyright license. The final argument that could be made is the practical one; that regardless of whether or not a Linux wireless developer has any legal or moral right to do what NetApp developers have done years ago, that it would be better to cooperate. That's a judgement call, and I'll assume that the BSD wireless developers are different from the people who are screaming and trolling on the kernel mailing list --- since if there is
