Re: OpenBSD bcw: Possible GPL license violation issues

[Theo de Raadt <deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org>]

> We put THOUSANDS of hours of work into bcm43xx and you
> simply relicense it without permission. Your point being?

It was an accident for him to commit it.  But it was no accident you
decided to make a public fuss about it.  Now you have your public
fuss.

> > > Snipped?  I presume, then, you admit you are misrepresenting others' 
> > > opinions in this thread.
> > 
> > No, there was a side discussion about whitespace and variable naming,
> > and even algorithms covered by the GPL.  Gimme a break.  These were
> > essentially claimed by some of the examples shown by Michael.  Go look
> > carefully.
> 
> You simply don't get it. These were EXAMPLES of why we think the
> code was copied 1:1. This has NOTHING to do with copyright law
> at this point. It simply shows: "Oh look, you named that variable
> or that function exactly like I did, although the specs did not
> suggest naming. Unlikely to be so by coincidence."

Those were just 'EXAMPLES'?  So you had no evidence?  Why would you
show examples of white space and variable naming when you had real
evidence?  Or did you think that the examples would be evidence?

Of COURSE Marcus was reading your driver at the same time.  That's
explicitly permitted by law.  He can read it, and then he can rewrite
it to do the same thing but with his own 'expression' and there is
nothing you or anyone else can do about it because you chose to use
Copyright law to govern distribution.

Marcus is not contrained to reading only the specs.  If we find
anything to read, we may read it, to understand it.  Some of those
variables you gave are the obvious right names for the variables, and
choosing other names would simply be disingenious.

> > That said, there were more real issues, and those have been dealt with
> > in a reply from Marcus, plus the driver now being deleted.
> 
> I want to point out again that I _never_ made it a requirement
> to delete the driver.

You still don't get it, do you.  Your approach to conflict resolution
was to crank it up, and then crank it up a few notches more.  If you
wanted to resolve it nicely you would have sent a private mail AS ALL
THE REST OF THE ENTIRE DAMN COMMUNITY DOES FIRST.

> I offered ways to handle it by going through
> the code and judging on a case-by-case base of what can stay and
> what has to be rewritten by you.

I am not alone in believing your offer was a pile of horse shit.  As I
have said before, you don't kick a cat a couple of times and then
wonder why it won't come eat kibbles out of your hand.

> > The Italian dude in particular was complaining bitterly in private
> > mail about the whitespace similarities... good grief, not whitespace
> > similarities.  How SCO of him.
> 
> Yeah. Must be coincidence that you typed whitespace exactly like
> we did. I'm sure this didn't come from copying, but from coincidence.

Or an accident.


The only accident I am watching now is that you won't admit that your
whole approach bloody stank.