Open source coders stealing open source code. Also, the hell has frozen over

From the Inquirer:

Developers OpenBSD took code from their brethren at Linux, violating the code’s licence, the GPL. To the horror of the Linux folk, the OpenBSD licence allows proprietary use.

The Linux coders went to great pains to reverse engineer Broadcom’s wireless chipset. The company’s hardware is found in many wireless devices, but Broadcom shuns open source.

I spent most of my morning reading the discussion between Michael Buesch, one of the coders and copyright holders of the driver, and the folks at OpenBSD, bursting in occasional sessions of loud laughter at the ever so fascinating Theo de Raadt’s comments.

Basically, the situation is as follows: the guys who wrote the GPL’d Linux driver were surprised to discover that important parts of it were copied and pasted in the BSD implementation of a similar driver which was relicensed under BSD-licence. They notified the author of the aforementioned fact, Marcus Glocker, and the BSD community on the BSD list, …and then all hell broke loose. Even though he did offer them an easy way out:

So if you ask “May I use this and that function” and if I own the Copyright on that particular function, I will approve or deny your request. Other Copyright holders of the bcm43xx code might act the same way.

Marcus Glocker did not admit taking the code and completely removed the bcw driver from the CVS tree. Stupid and childish acting, indeed. But the main attraction of the discussion is de Raadt. If you don’t know why, do a little research on him and his attitude towards everyone else, he is anything but friendly. I was saying that hell froze over - it must have, because not once, but at least 5 times de Raadt accused Michael of being inhumane:

• Are you not human?
• “Just like years ago you lost interest in being a loving caring human being who knows the impact of their words.”
• “Your postings have been simply inhuman.”

implied that he knew how human beings work

• “You have no understanding of how human beings work.”

threw around some insults,

• You are a very poor example of humankind.
• You’re main characteristic is ‘bully’

AND implied he has empathy

• “I have at least some fucking empathy in my soul.”

Sure you do Theo, sure you do.

He also mentioned “Almost all the free software is written by teams of humans who try to be nice to each other”. Ow, really? I wonder when was the last time de Raadt was ever nice to anyone.

His reaction is particularly interesting, taking into account this little thing, a couple of months back: OVER OUR DEAD BODIES THE ATHEROS DRIVER WILL NOT BE RE-LICENSED TO BE GPL OR DUAL. PERIOD. </deRaadt>