Re: OpenBSD bcw: Possible GPL license violation issues

[Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org>]

On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 18:19 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote: 
> > I'm a member of linux-wireless list, an occasional contributor to
> > bcm43xx and a MadWifi developer.
> > 
> > It has been a few months ago that I was feeling bad for another OpenBSD
> > driver developer.  The MadWifi team asked him to relicense parts of the
> > driver (so called openhal) under GPL so that if would be easier for us
> > to erase the boundary between the HAL and the rest of MadWifi and
> > eventually integrate it into the Linux kernel.
> > 
> > We got a message from you, which was rather abusive, and it just made
> > impossible for that OpenBSD developer to do anything but to deny our
> > request.  I was feeling bad for him, because it was his code.  I would
> > not want to be in a similar situation.
> 
> Pavel,
> 
> To counter your complete fabrications above, here is the final part of
> the real story about Reyk's Atheros driver.  This mail exchange
> happened after repeated pestering mailings to Reyk and me, months and
> months in a row, from Luis R. Rodriguez and his minions.
> 
> Pavel, you fabricated that entire story in the 2 paragraphs above.

Theo,

I appreciate that you found time to write a more detailed reply to my
message.

It wasn't my intention to tell the whole story, let alone fabricate
anything.  It's not a proper forum anyway.

I was answering your e-mail where you touched the emotional side of this
scandal.  I found it's highly hypocritical that you would care about
feelings of one OpenBSD developer in public, but act so differently with
another OpenBSD developer (semi-)privately.  Now I understand that what
I saw as rudeness was just your usual style.

I'm afraid I would never understand those who chose to work with you in
the same team.  It's hard to sympathize with somebody acting so
irrationally.  That was my point.

Perhaps Michael could have handled the situation better, but all that
"poor Marcus" show was ridiculous and unconvincing, at least in my eyes.

Please don't get me wrong, I want OpenBSD to be good and reliable, I
want it to support as many devices as possible.  I would not object
against relicensing my code under BSD license, as long as I know what is
going on.  I may even help testing some drivers.

Just please be more civilized and don't shift the blame.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin