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Comment by s_dev | Hacker News Reader

You could have easily taken the full quote -- it's not quite the contradiction you're trying to make:

"GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time. But once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back."

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>Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out.

Does he offer any examples of this happening ?

The point I think Theo is trying to make is in the open source world you simply have to expect that people will take code - put it under a different licence and modify it - restricting their ability to take back the modified code into OpenBSD.

Typically OSS licences allow and tolerate "selfish" behaviour. I don't think I or he needs to back up this claim with examples.

>that people will take code - put it under a different licence and modify it

Ok, although the 'take code and put it under a different license' is untrue, you can't re-license code unless you are the copyright owner, I gather that he means someone making modifications/enhancements and placing them under a license which OpenBSD can't use while remaining fully BSD licensed.

This happened when Apple adopted pf they added a few enhancements of their own but wrapped them in Apple's license so pf maintainers could not add the changes back into upstream pf.

This also happened with Linux's Atheros drivers (which were derived from OpenBSD, but modifications were published under the GPL instead of the BSD or ISC licenses; Theo argued that doing so was actually a violation of the BSD license (apparently they were stripping out the BSD license in the actual source files? I'm fuzzy on the details)). I don't remember what the outcome was.

That comment came about because of a licensing spat with the atheros source code.

http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070913014315

It's worth remembering the full context to that incident. Earlier that year OpenBSD had been found to contain code that had been copied from a Linux GPL wireless driver project, in violation of the GPL. The Linux developers made a public mailing list posting about it and a lot of drama ensued:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/...

Theo got very upset that the Linux devs practised 'full disclosure' over the violation and didn't contact OpenBSD privately (presumably he thinks customers who make use of OpenBSD should be fully informed about security threats that affect them, but not informed at all about legal threats that might put them at risk). He also tried to argue that the multiple commits over a period of time that contained copy and pasted GPL code was accidental, and got very upset when people suggested that one couldn't possibly accidentally copy specific portions of a GPL codebase and commit it to the repo multiple times. Theo also tried to argue that it wasn't a copyright violation since the code wasn't actually run-able (he knows full well that isn't how copyright law works).

The Linux developers response to that incident was also possibly partly motivated by earlier requests by some Linux developers for OpenBSD to dual licence portions of a different driver (i.e. also make it GPL). OpenBSD refused, for some of the reasons discussed already in this thread (they would likely receive GPL licensed changes that they would not be able to use). The strong reaction from the Linux devs was maybe to be expected after they had been told they couldn't use OpenBSD code, but then found OpenBSD had been stealing their code.

So there was a great big mess of egos and petty squabbling. I think a lot of that motivated the later copyright violations in the atheros drivers by the Linux developers that Theo is (rightly) complaining about above.

> once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back

I don't get it. Can't you retain copyright to code you yourself release under GPL and also use it under a different license or as part of closes source software? As far as I know, you can...

Let me rephrase the quote for you: "once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get the modifications back"

That's what he meant. Look at the full context.

And you can from proprietary licensed modifications?

FSF recommendation is that you use the same license as the project which you are contributing to. If you use a BSD project, contribute your patches under BSD. If its GPL, contribute under GPL. If you combine work under BSD and GPL and write modifications, contribute back the modifications based on what code you are doing modification for.

The proprietary way is to release modification only if its make a business sense to do so, and I don't know if OpenBSD actually has a official recommendation in this aspect. If they do, its not something I have ever seen.

That's not the point. Let me rephrase that:

- one of GPL's cool thing is that it prevents proprietary software from including GPL'd code without contributing back to the community

- Because BSD is not as strict as GPL regarding license derivation, GPL says "BSD is bad, you're allowing proprietary software to use BSD code without giving back"

- Some people take BSD code, modify it and distribute modifications under GPL

- Because of this, the original BSD code authors can't benefit from the modifications, only GPL projects can... doing exactly what GPL was against in the first place (preventing authors from enjoying modifications)

Theo is only pointing out the irony of it all.

One could argue that the they can get the GPL project, build over it too and distribute it.

Not much a comparison to proprietary software.

But then they would not be free to use the BSD license, they would have to use the GPL license. If you were able to take a GPL project and "wrap it" in a BSD license, then you would be taking away all of the GPL restrictions effectively rendering the GPL null and void. Do you really think that it is that "easy" to skirt the GPL? What point is the GPL if all you need to do is "wrap it" in a BSD project and then everything becomes BSD licensed?

I guess that other way that I could interpret your response is that you are suggestion that the BSD people should just relicense their stuff as GPL to be able to use GPL'd project. This really ignores the points being made (if this is what you are saying).

> exactly what GPL was against in the first place (preventing authors from enjoying modifications)

This is not an accurate description of what the GPL is shooting for, which has significant consequences on the things built up from this misunderstanding.

You're right, it is important to remind that GPL is shooting for user freedom, and final users getting free access to modifications; that authors enjoy modifications is only a nice side-effect that isn't even required at all, but is in practice common. The misunderstanding seems to be from the clear separation between users and developers that GPL does.

You can ask all copyright holders of the code since the code was GPL'd to relicense the code under a different license (BSD presumably). If only one declines you can't use their code and anything based on it.

I responded to the statement that Theo De Raadt is always complained about people not contributing back. The rest of the quote, including the "GPL fan" and "we cannot get it back" is only leading to the regular flame wars and do not contribute to the question: Do Theo De Raadt always complain about contributions? Yes, No?

I dislike labeling like BSD fanatics, BSD fans, GPL fan, and GPL fanatics. Neither contribute to clam and reasonable discussion. Thus I did not include it.

I also find the implied statement that proprietary licensed software can be relicensed by anyone to BSD to be very misleading and wrong. If a author who license something under a proprietary license later decides to relicense part of it under BSD, then a author of GPL licensed software can equally do so to part of their code. The BSD author has as little entitlement to proprietary changes as to GPL changes.

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