I, Michael Buesch, am one of the maintainers of the GPL'd Linux
wireless LAN driver for the Broadcom chip (bcm43xx).
The Copyright holders of bcm43xx (which includes me) want to talk
to you, OpenBSD bcw developers, about possible GPL license and therefore
Copyright violations in your bcw driver.
We believe that you might have directly copied code
out of bcm43xx (licensed under GPL v2), without our explicit permission,
into bcw (licensed under BSD license).
There are implementation details in bcm43xx that appear exactly
the same in bcw. These implementation details clearly don't come
from the open specifications at bcm-specs.sipsolutions.net
or bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net.
We have always made and still make a great effort to keep our code clean
of any Copyright issues (cleanroom design). Please make sure you also do.
A few examples follow of what we think might be GPL violations.
This list is far from being complete.
BCW_PHY_STACKSAVE()
BCW_ILT_STACKSAVE()
bcw_stack_save()
bcw_stack_restore()
These functions are a possible implementation of the specs when
they say "backup/restore a value".
Yet, it looks like you had exactly the same idea implementing this
generic description that I had.
bcw_set_opmode()
This function does not appear in the specifications.
I think Jiri Benc wrote it initially (and gave it its name) and
I extended it.
bcw_leds_switch_all()
is not in the specs, but a pure implementation detail of bcm43xx.
bcw_sprom_read()
This is obviously copied. Even the error message string is similiar.
bcw_phy_calc_loopback_gain()
I think it's no coincidence that you also decided to name the backup
variables like
uint16_t backup_phy[15];
uint16_t backup_radio[3];
uint16_t backup_bband;
bcw_phy_init_pctl()
uint16_t saved_batt = 0, saved_ratt = 0, saved_txctl1 = 0;
int must_reset_txpower = 0;
bcw_phy_xmitpower()
Attenuation adjustment algorithms (while loops).
bcw_phy_lo_g_state()
This exactly matches bcm43xx, although the specs only have an abstract
description and diagram of the state machine.
bcw_phy_lo_g_deviation_subval()
/* XXX bcm43xx_voluntary_preempt() ? */
Nice comment there.
You might want to grep bcw for the string "bcm43xx"
and you will find more of them.
... and all the rest.
We'd like to have this issue resolved.
In general we are not against having a free (and BSD licensed) driver
in the BSD operating system. But you _have_ to cooperate with us if you'd
like to take our code and relicense it under BSD license. We intentionally
put the code under GPL license. We did _not_ do this, because "everybody
does this". We did this, among other reasons, because we
[citing Michael, Mon, 26 Dec 2005 13:03:44 +0100]
"don't think we should allow proprietary vendors to take our code
and close it again."
[citing Michael, Date unknown]
"What if Broadcom decides to take our LO measure state machine and
put it into the original driver? (The Rev Engineers told me they have
a very different weird solution for this in their code).
I really don't want to see this happen."
We'd like to offer you to start cooperating with us.
We respect you and your Copyright. You should also do so on our work.
We would not be opposed to relicensing parts of our code under the BSD
license on an explicit case-by-case base.
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.
We're not out for blood, just for a fair resolution.
We'd like you to start contacting us to resolve the issue now.
Have a nice day.
--
Greetings Michael.
Again, your assumption is that he did it on purpose, and thus, you
are calling him a thief.
> On Thursday 05 April 2007 20:28, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > > > But when dealing with a parallel open source effort, you went right to
> > > > the jugular. I bet you deal nicer with companies.
> > >
> > > There was no deal with you!
> >
> > I don't understand this sentence of yours.
>
> There was no agreement with you to use my code.
>
> > Do you make deals with companies?
>
> Not yet. Maybe in future. Who knows...
>
> > Do you do those deals publically?
>
> That depends on what the company does.
> If the company illegally distributes my code to the public,
> I _will_ contact them in public as well.
>
> If they contact me in private _before_ distributing the code,
> I will respond in private.
>
> The exact same thing would have been true for you.
> But you did _not_ do any effort to contact me before distributing
> my code.
>
> > What are you saying?
> >
> > Was Marcus suppose do to have some sort of deal with you?
>
> The deal was: He asks for relicensing-permission on
> a particular faction of my code and I ACK or deny it.
>
> I explained the exact deal more than once.
>
> --
> Greetings Michael.
On Thursday 05 April 2007 02:29, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > Who is mean here? Again, we aren't out for blood. I don't care for who is
> > mean here. But if you do, you should be a bit more careful before insulting
> > people.
>
> OH i get it. I'm insulting you, but you guys are not mean by taking it
> widely public. No private mail received anyone.
I'm sorry. This GPL violation is too obvious.
Compare the code. Many functions are 1:1 copied. The author of
bcw can't tell me that he did not intentionally violate the GPL
and our copyright.
> If Marcus Glocker just gives up now, and aborts his efforts, I would
> not be surprised. I'd be a bit dissapointed but then it is just the
> increasingly rare Broadcom chipset.
Marcus Glocker is free to contact us to get a clean relicensing
agreement on the code. I wrote that in the first mail.
> If he quit, I would understand his position completely, based on the
> first contact with him about this issue BEING A PUBLIC DRAG THROUGH
> THE MUD BY YOU GUYS.
Your code is public. We respond in your public GPL violation in
a public mail.
> This infighting between two teams trying to support the same chipset
> is a complete mockery of the publicness of the original reverse
> engineering effort. My guess is that Michael is thinking very
> carefully about whether starting the discussion in public was the
> right thing to do, but I am very sure that Stefano jumping in to lob a
> second volley of mud helps noone's cause, especially Michael's cause.
> Stefano, if you want this resolved nicely, I suggest you think before
> you send more mail.
Please don't attack Stefano. This leads to nothing.
He is also a copyright holder of large amounts of bcm43xx code.
> > Maintaining whitespace and variable names.
>
> Copyrighted whitespaces and variable names, you mean, right?
We are not talking about variable names of whitespaces.
We are talking about copied code and algorithms.
The examples I brought were just examples.
--
Greetings Michael.
> On Thursday 05 April 2007 20:32, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > Or are you now going to say that all the functions he
> > is using are OK to use?
>
> No!
> I decide this on a case-by-case base as you OpenBSD guys contact
> me and ask "Is it OK to you to use this particular fraction of code...".
> I wrote that in the very first mail.
He did NOT mail you, because he did not know he had made a mistake.
Again, you are assuming he did not make a mistake, and you are thus
calling him a thief.
> > No, you wanted him to come begging,
>
> I want you to respect my copyright. Fullstop.
No, your message offered that he can come begging, because that is the
best that thieves may do.
Come little dog, come beg for forgiveness.
You are a very poor example of humankind.
Theo de Raadt wrote:
> Instead, now, another Open Source developer has quit.
"I am going to take my toys and go home" is an immature, childish
response to an adult problem.
> You're no big man. You're main characteristic is 'bully'.
Pot. Kettle. Etc.
Jeff
On Thursday 05 April 2007 22:56, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> It makes me happy to show that I have empathy for a situation where
> someone who puts hundreds of hours of work in as a hobby, and to
> defend that person. It makes me extremely unhappy that I have to do
> so, and that some other people think this is a non-event.
We put THOUSANDS of hours of work into bcm43xx and you
simply relicense it without permission. Your point being?
> > > <rest deleted, because the above line is so important>
> >
> > 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."
> 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. 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.
> 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.
[Irony may be found in the mail above]
--
Greetings Michael.
On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 16:22 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > "What if Broadcom decides to take our LO measure state machine and
> > put it into the original driver? (The Rev Engineers told me they have
> > a very different weird solution for this in their code).
> > I really don't want to see this happen."
>
> For the record, I want to warn you that you CANNOT COPYRIGHT
> A STATE MACHINE, which is what the above sentence implies.
That was in a different discussion, quoted out of context. Another part
of Michael's email gives some context:
> bcw_phy_lo_g_state()
> This exactly matches bcm43xx, although the specs only have an abstract
> description and diagram of the state machine.
Hence, it'd be only fair to say that he did, in fact, talk about the
expression/implementation of the state machine.
johannes
On Friday 06 April 2007 11:04, Ivo van Doorn wrote:
> > I don't think he intentionally did it.
>
> Ok, so it was only the commit that was perhaps accidental, it does mean
> that he should be more carefull about what he is exactly committing.
We should not confuse that it was not "the commit", but the code has
been committed in several commits. (I didn't count them)
A mistake several times in a row? Isn't that unlikely to be a mistake them?
--
Greetings Michael.
> > You refuse to accept it was an accident. Therefore we refuse to
> > accept that your public posting was an accident.
>
> Both exactly right.
You purposely set out to humiliate him.
> I never said I wanted the driver to be deleted. Re-read the whole
> thread please. But switch your "turn the meaning of sentences over" device
> off first, please.
Your fancy words left him no choice.
> > Jason Dixon is a liar because he doubts something? How can he be a
>
> This sentence is the prove that you don't read mails exactly before
> replying. Jason did not "doubt something". He wrote [citing]:
> "there is NO DOUBT that they would have notified a corporation privately"
>
> Note the capitalized words.
>
> This is a plain lie. There is no special exception from me to companies.
> I already said that in another mail.
There is no doubt in my mind either that you would treat a company
better than you treated Marcus.
Especially after you just saw what happened when you treat someone
like this.
My guess is you learned an important lesson, but just don't have
the balls to admit it.
On Friday 06 April 2007 01:51, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> Please get your developers off our mailing list, attacking our users
> with one liners. Or should I perhaps just add a cc to misc in future
> mails?
>
> ---
> Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 20:14:59 -0300
> From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9s_Delfino?=" <[email protected]>
I don't know who [email protected] is.
--
Greetings Michael.
From: Theo de Raadt <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:56:29 -0600
> > 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.
The main aim right now for you is to deflect as much attention as
possible away from the fact that someone was caught red handed putting
GPL'd code into a BSD driver.
That is why you keep harping back to the issue about Michael's
approach to dealing with this.
I understand why you might want to do damage control like this.
There is also no way one can directly copy GPL'd code into a BSD
driver, check it into a CVS tree, and have no idea what in the world
one is doing. I don't believe that argument for one second.
A developer working on a BSD driver for 6 months is oblivious to the
fact that copying in some GPL'd code might not be a good idea? Give
me a break.
There have been some very clever methods employed here in this thread
to control the path of a conversation. For example, you knew that if
you gave the full URL for the Empathy article at Wikipedia, nobody
would click on it and read it. Yet you used a tinyurl, and this had
the psychological effect of making nearly everyone reading curious
what the tinyurl pointed to, and they clicked it. You even got me
with that one.
> I won't reply to your mail anymore, as you are not interrested
> in a real solution to this. Instead you write things like that:
>
> On Thursday 05 April 2007 20:48, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > You are a very poor example of humankind.
>
> Which has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of
> copyright and GPL violation.
You're right. This whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with the
GPL. The entire issue has to do with your approach towards solving
problems.
An approach which has shown that it just plain does not get the
results that you, we, or anyone in the community benefits from.
> I could say similiar things to you, but I don't.
> I wrote the initial mail to get the issue resolved, but
> not insult you.
You wrote the initial mail in PUBLIC rather than in PRIVATE,
and you did not get the result you wanted.
> Yet, you think it's my turn to be "human" and so on.
> But why did _you_ not be human and asked before using
> our stuff? Ah, I know, it was a mistake...
> At least in your opinion.
If you won't accept that Marcus made a mistake, why should anyone
assume that you didn't made a mistake with your public posting?
You purposely attacked Marcus in public, for some strange reason.
You did not do it to defend your license, because a private mail
would have fixed the problem and you would have basically had
your name attached in a nice way for the fact that Marcus had looked
at your code.
Instead, now, another Open Source developer has quit.
You're no big man. You're main characteristic is 'bully'.
Please get your developers off our mailing list, attacking our users
with one liners. Or should I perhaps just add a cc to misc in future
mails?
---
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 20:14:59 -0300
From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9s_Delfino?=" <[email protected]>
To: misc <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: bcw(4) is gone
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
X-Loop: [email protected]
Precedence: list
Sender: [email protected]
On 4/5/07, Steven Harms <[email protected]> wrote:
> This isnt a question of him being wrong, its a question of HOW IT WAS
> HANDLED. Get it?
>
> The simple courtesy of privately emailing someone would have taken 30
> seconds and would have saved everyone a bunch of time, energy, and
> embarrassment.
>
> On 4/5/07, Andris Delfino <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 4/5/07, Daniel Ouellet <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Andris Delfino wrote:
> > > > What's wrong? They protect their license. Period.
> > >
> > > Did you read the full tread first before you wrote this? Did you look
at
> > > the code in CVS, did you even see Marcus reply and why?
> > >
> > >
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/1573
> > >
> > > I don't think you did!
> > >
> > > He sure did a hell of a huge amount of work that was his, and original
> > > for your own benefit, and the only mistakes he may have done was to try
> > > to work on it faster then he may should have and wrongly include
> > > temporary files to help in the process!
> > >
> > > Should he had finish his work in a later time and not try to make this
> > > available sooner to us, then nothing would have been said on this.
> > >
> > > In any case a simple private email to him directly would have been the
> > > decent human being things to do, but I guess you don't even get that do
> you?
> > >
> > > Just like I said before.
> > >
> > > Where the hell is the open community is going these days, I have no
> > > clue... Look to me it sure enjoy destroy itself for sure.
> > >
> > > I am lost for words!
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Yes, and he was wrong. He shouldn't base his work in copylefted
> > software (if he intend to release the result as non-copylefted).
> >
> > Licenses are licenses.
> >
> >
>
>
He should realized that he couldn't do that... get it?
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 20:14:59 -0300
From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9s_Delfino?=" <[email protected]>
To: misc <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: bcw(4) is gone
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
X-Loop: [email protected]
Precedence: list
Sender: [email protected]
On 4/5/07, Steven Harms <[email protected]> wrote:
> This isnt a question of him being wrong, its a question of HOW IT WAS
> HANDLED. Get it?
>
> The simple courtesy of privately emailing someone would have taken 30
> seconds and would have saved everyone a bunch of time, energy, and
> embarrassment.
>
> On 4/5/07, Andris Delfino <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 4/5/07, Daniel Ouellet <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Andris Delfino wrote:
> > > > What's wrong? They protect their license. Period.
> > >
> > > Did you read the full tread first before you wrote this? Did you look
at
> > > the code in CVS, did you even see Marcus reply and why?
> > >
> > >
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/1573
> > >
> > > I don't think you did!
> > >
> > > He sure did a hell of a huge amount of work that was his, and original
> > > for your own benefit, and the only mistakes he may have done was to try
> > > to work on it faster then he may should have and wrongly include
> > > temporary files to help in the process!
> > >
> > > Should he had finish his work in a later time and not try to make this
> > > available sooner to us, then nothing would have been said on this.
> > >
> > > In any case a simple private email to him directly would have been the
> > > decent human being things to do, but I guess you don't even get that do
> you?
> > >
> > > Just like I said before.
> > >
> > > Where the hell is the open community is going these days, I have no
> > > clue... Look to me it sure enjoy destroy itself for sure.
> > >
> > > I am lost for words!
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Yes, and he was wrong. He shouldn't base his work in copylefted
> > software (if he intend to release the result as non-copylefted).
> >
> > Licenses are licenses.
> >
> >
>
>
He should realized that he couldn't do that... get it?
> This is a blatant misrepresentation of the emails you've been reading.
So you feel that Michael's "public scolding" approach was the common
sense approach?
I note that archives of [email protected] and other
such efforts show that hundreds of other "violations" have been
handled privately first, so it seems that this is the commonly
accepted way to handle these issues.
Or am I misrepresenting the history now too?
Or are you just jumping in with one line non-sequitours because that
is your role in the community?
On Wednesday 04 April 2007 23:39, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> It will be resolved in our tree, but it is up to him which way he does
> it. But when you approach issues like this with comments like "We'd
> like you to start contacting us to resolve the issue now" and your
> first mail is cc'd to a couple hundred people.... in the future,
> please think more carefully, ok?
No. I'd like _you_ to make "your" developers aware of the issue
that you'd like to have the openbsd tree clean, in the first place.
> And you have probably royally pissed of a developer working in
> parallel in the same problem space as youself. Would you be happy to
> receive a mail like you just sent?
Why would someone send me a mail about copyright violations in bcm43xx,
if there aren't any, to the best of my knowledge?
--
Greetings Michael.
> > Cooperation is based on mutual trust.
> >=20
> > We don't trust Linux people anymore.
>
> I find this comment amusing. Do you expect us to trust you after
> discovering such blatant license violations?
You're right -- perhaps you should not trust us.
By the way, we are the people who write OpenSSH. Perhaps you should
not trust it, either.
Will you guys defend Micheal's the point where we public mail to
absolutely any point at all, just because we are not GPL people?
> [citing Michael, Date unknown]
> "What if Broadcom decides to take our LO measure state machine and
> put it into the original driver? (The Rev Engineers told me they have
> a very different weird solution for this in their code).
> I really don't want to see this happen."
For the record, I want to warn you that you CANNOT COPYRIGHT
A STATE MACHINE, which is what the above sentence implies.
You can copyright the actual way it is written ('expression'), but you
CANNOT copyright 'mechanism' or 'interface'. Copyright only covers
what is called 'expression', and that of course is subject to judicial
interpretation. But a state machine to solve a problem is not
expression.
When you start talking about copyrighting state machines, youy
are talking about using copyright as a new style of patent law.
That's not what it does.
Whoever Michael is, that comment above about using the GPL as a patent
like tool is crazy. And if you think that the GPL has any binding
against Broadcom copying the idea of your state machine, you are
quite deluded.
On Thursday 05 April 2007 07:41, Marcus Glocker wrote:
> I wanted to make some quick progress (maybe too quick), and rewrite
> the functions in question after seeing some first success, e.g.
> receivment of first frames, which isn't the case right now. But
> still, the specs for some functions are so strict, writing tons
> of registers in a strict order, some parts will still look similar.
To make it clear. We are not issueing any copyright claims on
these magic register sequences.
This is only about algorithms and so on. I mentioned the LO state
machine, for example.
> The last thing I want is to start a license war with you guys,
> and also I don't want to harm OpenBSD further with this issue.
> And of course we want to solve that license issue ASAP.
>
> So, I am suggestion three options:
>
> 1. You give me some time and I try to rewrite the code
> in question. We keep in touch, and maybe we can split
> up both parties in freedom afterwards.
>
> 2. Same as option one, but if my time resources keep
> shrinking like they do right now, spending weekends
> in the office and I can't fix up the driver soon,
> I'll drop the driver.
>
> 3. We don't come to a point and I'll plain drop the driver
> directly, very soon.
4. bcm43xx people review the driver and think about relicensing
(parts of) bcw, so you don't have to rewrite it.
We don't want to distrurb bcw development, but we don't like
the harsh way of taking code without permission and asking
for permission afterwards.
If you want to have more code relicensed, please ask on a
case-by-case base _before_ importing it into bcw.
--
Greetings Michael.
On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:25:56 -0600
Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> > You made a drama out of a simple issue.
>
> Actually Michael and his friends made a drama out of a simple issue;
> so simple that it would have been dealt with in private within days.
> And everyone would have looked good about it, and felt great about it.
>
> Stefano, I am not inflaming. I am rightly justified in complaining
> that someone has been treated very badly, for no good reason.
>
> Cooperation is not built on that. Maybe you specifically don't care
> about cooperation, but I am sure there are others who do. So perhaps
> watch your words.
Got it. Your MUA has a bug that doesn't let you read more than the first
line of an email. Now you will wonder... "first what"?
--
Ciao
Stefano
On Thursday 05 April 2007 18:34, Marcus Glocker wrote:
> OK, I decided to go for option 3:
>
> ***
>
> From: Marcus Glocker <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 10:25:25 -0600 (MDT)
> Subject: CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src
>
> CVSROOT: /cvs
> Module name: src
> Changes by: [email protected] 2007/04/05 10:25:25
>
> Modified files:
> sys/conf : files
> sys/dev/pci : files.pci
> sys/dev/cardbus: files.cardbus
> Removed files:
> share/man/man4 : bcw.4
> sys/dev/ic : bcw.c bcwreg.h bcwvar.h
> sys/dev/pci : if_bcw_pci.c
> sys/dev/cardbus: if_bcw_cardbus.c
>
> Log message:
> After been attacked by Michael Buesch <[email protected]> because we initially
> were using some of their routines in the bcw driver, I decided to stop
> working on it. To avoid any further license chit chat I plain drop the
> driver.
>
> ***
>
> Happy now?
>
> It's a pleasure to see how the OpenSource community stands together,
> and starting public wars instead of talking directly to the people
> involved.
I don't understand your reaction, really.
If you were really interrested in doing a Broadcom wireless driver for
openbsd, you would have chosen the option to relicense some code (and
therefore drop only that code which I refuse to relicense), which I gave
you.
It's a pity. I'd like you to sleep a night over this and rethink
your decision tomorrow.
Feel free to contact us to get code relicensed _before_ you re-add
it to the repository. This will make you and us happy and I'm sure
you'll have a working driver soon.
--
Greetings Michael.
On Thursday 05 April 2007 00:22, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > [citing Michael, Date unknown]
> > "What if Broadcom decides to take our LO measure state machine and
> > put it into the original driver? (The Rev Engineers told me they have
> > a very different weird solution for this in their code).
> > I really don't want to see this happen."
>
> For the record, I want to warn you that you CANNOT COPYRIGHT
> A STATE MACHINE, which is what the above sentence implies.
> You can copyright the actual way it is written ('expression'), but you
We explicitely takled about the IMPLEMENTATION. An Implementation _is_
"the way it is written". Fullstop.
> Whoever Michael is, that comment above about using the GPL as a patent
> like tool is crazy. And if you think that the GPL has any binding
> against Broadcom copying the idea of your state machine, you are
> quite deluded.
Please read my mail more carefully in the first place, please.
--
Greetings Michael.
> Who is mean here? Again, we aren't out for blood. I don't care for who is
> mean here. But if you do, you should be a bit more careful before insulting
> people.
OH i get it. I'm insulting you, but you guys are not mean by taking it
widely public. No private mail received anyone.
> Plus, I think the mail was sent to the specific people for this
> issue. Would you please tell me who is not "specific" here?
How about we start with the following people, who do not seem like the
specific people to mail.
Martin Langer <[email protected]>
Danny van Dyk <[email protected]>
Andreas Jaggi <[email protected]>
Larry Finger <[email protected]>
[email protected]
Johannes Berg <[email protected]>
Joseph Jezak <[email protected]>
John Linville <[email protected]>
Greg kh <[email protected]>
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
If Marcus Glocker just gives up now, and aborts his efforts, I would
not be surprised. I'd be a bit dissapointed but then it is just the
increasingly rare Broadcom chipset.
If he quit, I would understand his position completely, based on the
first contact with him about this issue BEING A PUBLIC DRAG THROUGH
THE MUD BY YOU GUYS.
This infighting between two teams trying to support the same chipset
is a complete mockery of the publicness of the original reverse
engineering effort. My guess is that Michael is thinking very
carefully about whether starting the discussion in public was the
right thing to do, but I am very sure that Stefano jumping in to lob a
second volley of mud helps noone's cause, especially Michael's cause.
Stefano, if you want this resolved nicely, I suggest you think before
you send more mail.
> Maintaining whitespace and variable names.
Copyrighted whitespaces and variable names, you mean, right?
> On Thursday 05 April 2007 18:48, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > I personally believe that you made a very poor choice by publically
> > attacking a developer who did not even have working code yet. You chose
>
> The GPL is not about "working code", it's about distribution.
> And you did distribute our code under the BSD license, which is
> a GPL violation.
Marcus made a mistake, and instead of privately mailing him you told a
bunch of mailing lists. Your mails make it clear that you don't
believe his process was in good faith. Fine -- then we cannot believe
that your very public posting was in good faith, either.
> I think this is dangerous, because the code is tainted and it
> may even taint other codebases. For example if someone working
> for opensolaris choses to import bcw into solaris, as he's rightfully
> got the opinion that bcw is BSD licensed.
Yes, dangerous mistakes happen all the time. But we live in a world
of source code, where mistakes can be undone.
Now that mistake is undone. In the way you wanted; was there every any
doubt in ANYONE'S MIND that Marcus would approach this any other way?
Or are you completely and totally deluded, and beyond that --
completely unaware of how human beings react?
> I offered several ways to solve the issue that would help bcw development
> (offering to relicense my code).
Isn't that a bit like offering a kibble to a cat after you've kicked it?
> If Marcus gave up that's a pity. But that's his choice. I respect that,
> although I hoped to get a better solution.
KICK KICK KICK KICK. I wish the cat still wants to come over and purr
near me.
There's thousands of people who write code, and try to be nice to the
people who write that code. When license problems happen, they try to
nicely get problems resolved privately first. If problems cannot be
nicely resolved, then they do them in a more public fashion.
There is a large culture of GPL proponents who privately deal with
companies to get things resolved, and then privately use legal force,
and then maybe, in the end, use public force.
But when dealing with a parallel open source effort, you went right to
the jugular. I bet you deal nicer with companies. What is the matter
with you? Are you not human?
But you, sir, are not in the group of people who try to nicely get
problems results. You publically kick people who make mistakes.
Maybe you don't feel guilty about what has happened here, but you no
longer have my respect. You don't understand how a human being might
react to being kicked in public, when a small private word might have
been better.
On Friday 06 April 2007 11:14, Michael Buesch wrote:
> On Friday 06 April 2007 11:04, Ivo van Doorn wrote:
> > > I don't think he intentionally did it.
> >
> > Ok, so it was only the commit that was perhaps accidental, it does mean
> > that he should be more carefull about what he is exactly committing.
>
> We should not confuse that it was not "the commit", but the code has
> been committed in several commits. (I didn't count them)
> A mistake several times in a row? Isn't that unlikely to be a mistake them?
Hehe, well there are 2 scenarios for this:
1) The commits were all done without thinking about what was being committed,
the code was not reviewed, and apparently the committed had no idea what
the license of his own code and of the code he copied from meant.
2) The commits were done on purpose, making the commits a direct and severe
GPL-violation.
If it was scenario 1, then I suggest Theo should be more strict towards his developers
and be more clear on what can and cannot be committed. Also I would recommend
that within his team the commits are better monitored to prevent these "mistakes"
in the future.
If it was scenario 2, then I suggest Theo will follow the same suggestions as I described
for scenario 1, but in addition should have some harsh talk towards his developers
regarding licenses, and he shouldn't start hide behind a discussion that is more about
whethere to have a "public" or "private" email regarding these issues.
Note that with both scenarios I have described it is clear that a big mistake was made
on the side of the BSD team, and it is that which should be addressed and not the
question if a public or private mail should be send to first start a discussion about the
violation.
Ivo
> On Thursday 05 April 2007 20:00, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > The most striking thing about this is that I am sure you guys are
> > treating Marcus worse than you would treat a company using your code
> > against license. You would privately mail a company, I am sure of it.
>
> This is the proof that you read mails in the way you want
> them to be. You should indead read my mail and _not_ interpret
> your personal foobar into my words.
On the contrary, I am reading the mails in the way that Marcus Glocker
read it, before he deleted the driver, because I have at least some
fucking empathy in my soul.
> We do not treat Marcus bad in any way.
That is a complete lie. You called him a thief, and PRESUMED that he
did it on purpose. In later mails privately to me you said that you
did not call him a thief of even imply it (I quote, "the word thief
was not even in my mind when I wrote it"), but then in your next
public mail you directly contradicted that again by saying you are
completely convinced he did it on purpose. You cannot have it both
ways; there is only one interpretation, that being that you are
accusing him of theft, just in other words.
> The opposite is true. We offered the explicit opportunity to
> get (some of the) code relicensed, if he starts to work together
> with us.
You have no understanding of how human beings work. You maligned someone
by saying he did it intentionally, therefore your explicit opportunities
are bullshit. Or are you now going to say that all the functions he
is using are OK to use?
No, you wanted him to come begging, after you called him a thief. You
obviously have no understanding of how human beings operate.
> > Your postings have been simply inhuman.
> >
> > And I will go out of my way to ensure that anyone in the future
> > understands that is our viewpoint on this.
>
> fine.
> > Copyrighted whitespaces and variable names, you mean, right?
>
> No.
What does that "No." mean. Are you being obtuse? I am quoting you:
> The bcw developers went public with it. This code was submitted to a
> public CVS. With multiple commits. Copying comments. Maintaining
> whitespace and variable names. Not even trying to hide that.
-----------------------------
If whitespacing and variable names do not matter for the larger issue
at hand, then I suggest you don't bring it up. Why would you bring it
up? Because you want to accuse. You don't want to see these issues
solved in the right way (whatever that will be). You want to accuse,
by bringing up whitespace. Why else would you bring up whitespace?
It should be obvious to anyone who actually goes and reads it, that
the remainder Marcus' driver shows that he IS TRYING TO TAKE A GOOD
FAITH APPROACH TOWARDS LICENSING. He is reading what he can and it
appears he made a few expedient mistakes. But the larger bulk of the
driver, shows that he is trying to do this right. I think Michael
knows this, but Stefano -- your agressiveness does not show that you
understand this.
Michael's initial overly public statemen did not dispute Marcus
obviously tried to do the right thing, but your agressiveness DOES
dispute it. Your sentence:
> Not even trying to hide that.
Is exceedingly agressive. If you have an agenda here, please make
it clear.
I read every sentence you wrote, but I will wait for Michael to reply.
He brought this issue up, he chose the venue, and he gets to decide
where this goes now. I've talked a little with Marcus, and I think
that based on Michael's next comments, Marcus will decide which
direction he goes.
Right about now I think you (Stefano) don't understand that every word
you say is leading certain people to abandon even trying to write an
alternative Broadcom driver. Your english seems solid, but you are
not listening to the vibe.
And ... if what you really want is that another Broadcom driver does
not come into existance, then just say so. If that is your agenda,
say so loud and clear, so that we can know. However if you are
comfortable with another driver existing in the future, then we will
wait for Michael to speak up. In this forum, since this is where he
has decided it should all go.
I believe that based on the public existance of reverse engineering
specifications for the chipset there are a number of people who have
no problem with there being MANY implimentations. But if you want to
piss off other people who will try, Stefano, just keep on talking...
> > > * removed their attribution
> >=20
> > The attribution was never to be added, because a couple of functions
> > were copied in temporarily to help development of other functions, and
> > then they were accidentally commited.
>
> To be honest it is completely beyond me how somebody manages
> to read code, considers it usefull (and thus has read the code in such a way
> that he was searching for something usefull), copy'n'paste the code and com=
> mits
> the code to cvs. And at the end of the day claims that it is an accident.
As I understand it, Marcus' process involved borrowing a few pieces of
the GPL codebase during his development process, so that he could
write further stubs in other parts. Then his process was supposed to
involve him commiting the pieces he had written himself, but not the
momentarily written GPL parts. And that is where a mistake happened;
as I understand it.
I don't think he intentionally did it.
I think anyone who thinks he intentionally did it should give him a
phone call and judge from the voice conversation with him if he did.
I invite one person from here to do it. Anyone willing to?
Otherwise, I warn you -- you are making a rather strong statement of
accusation.
> > It was an accident for him to commit it. =A0But it was no accident you
> > decided to make a public fuss about it. =A0Now you have your public
> > fuss.
>
> Everybody can make his own choice on the manner in which the violation is b=
> eing
> reported. Yes, Michael could have send a private mail, but he could also ha=
> ve made
> the violation even more public by adding some mail address that would have =
> started
> an even bigger flamewar.
> But note that 75% of the people following this thread would not have taken =
> too much
> interest into this violation when you did not jump into the trenches and st=
> arting to insult
> people in order to make a big fuzz about it
I am only here to point out that a gang of people publically jumping on
ONE DEVELOPER is an unacceptable process in any 'community'.
I am very sure that most of the senior Linux developers have the maturity
to try a personal mail to someone who they see a problem with.
By sending a private mail that was so strongly worded, Michael showed that
he lacks that maturity.
> You have your reasons for wanting a discussion about the GPL violation priv=
> ate, Michael
> had his reasons for making more people aware of the situation. Just because=
> somebody
> does not share the same opinion as you don't make him "inhumane", "harming =
> cooperation
> between open source projects". Neither is it true that somebody is
> "Not being supportive to the open source community" when he cannot fulfill =
> your request/demand.
His mail was without any empathy, and shows a lack of understanding of the
human mode of operation.
> I wonder what upsets you most, the fact that openBSD is not perfect in term=
> s of that the code
> contains a GPL violation or that you were forced into a public debate about=
> this while you prefer
> to flame and insult people privately.
OpenBSD is not perfect, no, not at all. Neither is OpenSSH.
> > * removed their attribution
>=20
> The attribution was never to be added, because a couple of functions
> were copied in temporarily to help development of other functions, an=
d
> then they were accidentally commited.
To be honest it is completely beyond me how somebody manages
to read code, considers it usefull (and thus has read the code in such =
a way
that he was searching for something usefull), copy'n'paste the code and=
commits
the code to cvs. And at the end of the day claims that it is an acciden=
t.
> It was an accident for him to commit it. =A0But it was no accident yo=
u
> decided to make a public fuss about it. =A0Now you have your public
> fuss.
Everybody can make his own choice on the manner in which the violation =
is being
reported. Yes, Michael could have send a private mail, but he could als=
o have made
the violation even more public by adding some mail address that would h=
ave started
an even bigger flamewar.
But note that 75% of the people following this thread would not have ta=
ken too much
interest into this violation when you did not jump into the trenches an=
d starting to insult
people in order to make a big fuzz about it
You have your reasons for wanting a discussion about the GPL violation =
private, Michael
had his reasons for making more people aware of the situation. Just bec=
ause somebody
does not share the same opinion as you don't make him "inhumane", "harm=
ing cooperation
between open source projects". Neither is it true that somebody is
"Not being supportive to the open source community" when he cannot fulf=
ill your request/demand.
I wonder what upsets you most, the fact that openBSD is not perfect in =
terms of that the code
contains a GPL violation or that you were forced into a public debate a=
bout this while you prefer
to flame and insult people privately.
Ivo
On Thursday 05 April 2007 21:13, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> I am not the only one with the belief that your process sucked.
> And neither is the person below. Many people see it that way.
> ---
> From: Jason Dixon <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src
> Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 14:56:37 -0400
> To: [email protected]
> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.3)
> X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new using ClamAV at dixongroup.net
> X-Loop: [email protected]
> Precedence: list
> Sender: [email protected]
> The way they chose to "notify" Marcus shows a complete lack of
> respect for Marcus.
The way OpenBSD folks used our code was a complete lack of respect
for us. Fullstop.
> As Theo expressed in the thread, there is NO
> DOUBT that they would have notified a corporation privately. Why
> would you treat an individual, working on the code out of their own
> desire, with less respect?
This is a lie.
Read the whole thread again!
--
Greetings Michael.
> Theo de Raadt wrote:
> >> This is a blatant misrepresentation of the emails you've been reading.
> >
> > So you feel that Michael's "public scolding" approach was the common
> > sense approach?
>
> No, I do not.
<rest deleted, because the above line is so important>
Why are you the first person in the entire GPL community to admit that
what Michael did might have some problems?
Shall I keep replying until everyone gets it?
Theo de Raadt wrote:
>> This is a blatant misrepresentation of the emails you've been reading.
>
> So you feel that Michael's "public scolding" approach was the common
> sense approach?
No, I do not.
But you nonetheless misrepresented Michael's argument (which I quoted,
and you then snipped). The items that were copied were more than merely
"white space, variable names which are the same, or simple 'save the
registers' algorithms".
Jeff
> We're not out for blood, just for a fair resolution.
> We'd like you to start contacting us to resolve the issue now.
>
> Have a nice day.
Wow, that's a hell of a long cc list for a request for a fair
resolution. the last 3 lines are mellow, but the body before that was
not very nice.
> We have always made and still make a great effort to keep our code clean
> of any Copyright issues (cleanroom design). Please make sure you also do.
We always try to make our stuff as clean as possible too. In fact, I
think no other code base out there is as clear of violations as ours.
This is a major problem in our code base.
Yes, this driver has other problems though. To begin with, it does
not even run yet, in any sense. Since it is not actual using code,
there will be those who argue that the full impact of the GPL does not
come to bear yet -- noone is "using" the code yet. But beyond that,
these types of problem should not exist in our tree. It will be
resolved.
But I don't know which way Marcus will do that. Maybe he'll just
delete the driver and quit even trying, because you chose to cc so
many people, and malign him. Maybe he'll simply replace every single
line that looks similar, and then he could rightly not even mention
any of the efforts of people like you. Or he'll could be nicer.
Maybe he will take your rather strong worded mail to a couple hundred
people in a cool way. I don't know. It will be choices he has to
make.
It will be resolved in our tree, but it is up to him which way he does
it. But when you approach issues like this with comments like "We'd
like you to start contacting us to resolve the issue now" and your
first mail is cc'd to a couple hundred people.... in the future,
please think more carefully, ok?
Because right now, in that mail, you've pretty much done Broadcom's
job for them. You've told the entire BSD community who may want to
use a driver for this chip later, that because of a few GPL issues you
are willing to use very strong words -- published very widely -- to
disrupt the efforts of one guy who is trying to do things for them.
And, you are going to do this using the GPL, even. You did not
privately mail that developer. No, you basically went public with it.
That is how about half the user and developer community will see it.
They will see your widely posted mail as an overly strong position.
And you have probably royally pissed of a developer working in
parallel in the same problem space as youself. Would you be happy to
receive a mail like you just sent? No, you would be really disturbed,
to your soul.
So next time, talk to the specific people, so you don't come off
as being mean, ok?
> No. I'd like _you_ to make "your" developers aware of the issue
> that you'd like to have the openbsd tree clean, in the first place.
I make developers aware. Marcus was aware. He made a few mistakes.
You don't believe him.
That's fine. We don't believe your public flogging was the kind and
right way to approach this whole problem.
But the issue is over. The code has been entirely deleted.
I hope you are happy. I am sure Marcus is not happy, because he's
thrown away about 800 hours of hobby work. But it is easier for him
to just abandon this, based on the strength of your initial mail.
I mean, if I were him, why would I bother going on, when there are
accusations about copyright being based on white space, variable
names which are the same, or simple "save the registers" algorithms
which you feel are too similar.
I'd say he did the right thing to give up.
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 15:39 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> How does cooperation start, if the first statements are about theft
> and lies?
>
> It doesn't. And you prefer it that way?
Since "cooperation" in your terms seems to imply living quietly with
somebody blatantly stealing and relicensing code I guess the only
possible answer to that is "yes".
johannes
> 4. bcm43xx people review the driver and think about relicensing
> (parts of) bcw, so you don't have to rewrite it.
> We don't want to distrurb bcw development, but we don't like
> the harsh way of taking code without permission and asking
> for permission afterwards.
And we don't like the harsh way of public flogging.
> If you want to have more code relicensed, please ask on a
> case-by-case base _before_ importing it into bcw.
No, it seems it is now too late. The driver has been deleted.
I personally believe that you made a very poor choice by publically
attacking a developer who did not even have working code yet. You chose
not to mail him privately and point out your concerns.
Marcus has chosen to give up.
Can you please stop mailing us about this? It's over. Your beloved
license has been protected, and it's over.
>From another mail from Michael:
> The word "thief" does only exist in your head.
> We never used that and I did not even consider to put that word
> into the mail.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38746
"Open Source coders caught stealing Open Source code"
Michael, you bloody implied it. Your entire posting translates
to "thief".
If you don't see that, then you are not a human being.
As I said, the driver has been deleted.
I am not the only one with the belief that your process sucked.
And neither is the person below. Many people see it that way.
---
From: Jason Dixon <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 14:56:37 -0400
To: [email protected]
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.3)
X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new using ClamAV at dixongroup.net
X-Loop: [email protected]
Precedence: list
Sender: [email protected]
On Apr 5, 2007, at 2:37 PM, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> Marcus was not really given much choice. Well, he was given some
> other choices, but they are rather ridiculous. He was accused, and
> quite frankly attacked, and Marcus has made his choice as to how to
> react.
>
> I will stand by him to make his own choice as he sees fit.
>
> This whole thing is not purely about the GPL license, but about the
> informing/enforcement approach taken by the Linux Broadcom people
> towards handling this issue. Their approach is inhuman and
> unacceptable.
>
> There are various lists on the net where more can be found out about
> this, and if people want to go find out more they should go search a
> bit.
The way they chose to "notify" Marcus shows a complete lack of
respect for Marcus. As Theo expressed in the thread, there is NO
DOUBT that they would have notified a corporation privately. Why
would you treat an individual, working on the code out of their own
desire, with less respect?
--
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net
> I think this is dangerous, because the code is tainted and it
> may even taint other codebases. For example if someone working
> for opensolaris choses to import bcw into solaris, as he's rightfully
> got the opinion that bcw is BSD licensed.
It's unbelievable how you show so much caring so much for these other
corporate code bases, but you are inhuman towards a person.
You included [email protected] to let him know of this problem,
that's very nice of you.
But you did so in a mail where you ACCUSED Marcus of being a
thief.
That's very pro-Corporate, and very anti-Human.
You just have zero empathy. When you don't have any understanding at
the emotional level of how other people will react, you just aren't
being a complete human. You can't be that harsh towards people and
then give them choices, and expect to get well reasoned results.
I suggest you look at
http://tinyurl.com/jqh2p
And I am stunned that so many of you who are cc'd don't say anything
about this. Is it OK for open source developers to accuse each other
publically like this, and not try private discussions first?
On Thursday 05 April 2007 23:33, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > 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.
You would not say this, if you'd have read and compared bcw to bcm43xx.
Reading code and writing it down again _IS_ copying. (Although I
doubt he did this, as copy'n'paste results in the same result).
Theo, you are a GREAT psychologic engineer.
You really make people feel they have done something wrong. But in
reality they are the victims. In reality bcm43xx developers are the
victims, because YOU, the openbsd developers, violated our
copyright in the first place.
You can not deny that and every independent lawyer on earth would
judge the same way.
It is simply obvious that the code was copied and NOT rewritten.
You have no point in saying the opposite now by takling bullshit
about "reading code" and "writing something down blabla".
> > > 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.
How can you type in code by accident that looks like mine?
I mean, you can get and infinite amount of monkeys with typewriters
and an infinite amount of time and you will end up with my code, but
that story doesn't count for me.
AND! Let's simply pretend it was really an accident. However that could
happen. How would that make the situation different? You have violated
the copyright of the bcm43xx developers. That's the fact that you can
not deny. You have dealt with it. Fine. I offered you a way to deal
with it in a much more elegant way. You didn't like it. Fine.
I'm fine with this. Know what? I don't care anymore about you, openbsd guys.
Do what you'd like to do. I'm out of your business.
In future don't violate my copyright anymore, and you won't hear anything
from me anymore.
I know I already said this, but now I won't respond to you anymore
(unless you insult me personally again, perhaps).
--
Greetings Michael.
> 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.
---
To: Eben Moglen <[email protected]>
cc: deraadt
Subject: Re: Provenance of OpenBSD 802.11a Atheros drivers
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:57:43 EDT."
<[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:57:58 -0600
From: Theo de Raadt <[email protected]>
> Clients of the Software Freedom Law Center have approached us for
> advice in connection with a project to adapt OpenBSD's Atheros drivers
> for use with Linux.
Hi.
Your clients have been spamming us for nearly a year trying to get us
to dual-license our code. Having been rebuffed repeatedly, they are
now questioning the provinance of the codebase which they earlier just
wanted a dual-license to. I urge you to consider who you are
representing. They crossed to the other side of the line of "zeal"
quite a while ago.
Your client refuses to believe us that the code is clean, and I I
guess now they are going to waste your time over it too.
> They have been presented with unsubstantiated
> information suggesting problems with the provenance of code.
Reyk's work has now been in our tree for roughly 2 years. Atheros was
aware of his effort since even before that, and they used to threaten
him for even starting a reverse engineering effort. Reyk lives in
Germany, and OpenBSD is based in Canada. Since his driver went into
our tree Atheros have not communicated towards us any direct way, not
even an email.
We have received no threats or anything from them directly; Atheros
employees have however levelled accusations of that kind fairly often,
voicing them privately to any parties who show an interest in reusing
our code, or making comments in public talks. The unsubstantiated
information your clients are bringing to you is privately mailed
accusations from Sam Leffler, an employee of Atheros, who is the paid
author of the closed-source vendor driver. Other accusations are
coming from Sam's close friend who also works inside Atheros, in a
higher position.
Those accusations are false.
> Before
> taking any other steps, given that the information suggesting trouble
> is itself unreliable, I wanted to ask you if /you/ have any reason to
> worry about that code.
I have no reason to worry about the code.
I was communicating with Reyk when the whole process of reverse
engineering was going on, and I saw the code go through the standard
"bug, fix, bug, fix" cycle. I also saw him disassembling chunks of
the code, and doing all the other crazy procedures one has to when
doing reverse engineering. He was constantly amazed at how bizzare
their architecture was, and on our discussion forums often ridiculed
the complexity of all the abstraction layers he was trying to dig
through. He spent more than a year making it work. The tail end of
this process is visible in our CVS logs. It was clearly a monumental
effort.
We will readily admit that even today his driver does not have
complete support for all Atheros chip families. In particular, only
about half of the Atheros radios work correctly. Some of them can
only tune 802.11b frequencies, or 802.11a, or vice versa. That's
because there is no documentation at all! If the whole reverse
engineering process was a fraud, and this was done in some wrong way
as Atheros employees allege, the driver would be much more complete
and bugfree. However even today 2 years later it is very much a "sort
of works" situation.
We have much significantly better support for many other wireless
devices. This is mostly because the Atheros chipsets are way more
complicated and buggy than other vendor's products.
> Obviously, if there is need of a cleanroom
> reimplementation, my clients would apply resources to the creation of
> an implementation that could be licensed appropriately for use in
> multiple free operating system kernels, but if you know the code to be
> clean in origin, that should be sufficient in itself.
It was a clean process. It was done by one person. If it had not
been done by that one super dedicated person, today there would be no
free Atheros code. It is under an ISC style licence.
We are, by the way, absolutely uninterested in any dual license
considerations, so the Linux people will have to accept the ISC-style
license. Your client will have to accept that situation as well,
since we have repeatedly told him so.
If that is not acceptable to them, they are free to read Reyk's driver
and write their own by reading our code. That is precisely the waste
of time we are often forced to do -- where we read GPL'd Linux drivers
for enough information to write our own BSD/ISC/MIT licensed versions,
quite often after Linux vendors have signed NDAs to receive vendor
documentation. If your clients choose to go that route they should
note that all the code will be freely readable in the end, and we will
be watching for copyright violations, and we will take them seriously.
It is my personal belief that the lack of love from GPL believers has
freed me from any responsibility to show love towards them.
Good luck helping them. I am sad that it always has to come to this
bullshit infighting.
As an aside.... If your client truly cared about the history of source
code, and risk to the Linux source tree, I would suggest they look at
some of the entirely unlicensed header files in Linux which contain
vendor microcode. They entirely lack a copyright notice, but
obviously came from a vendor. Since these files lack any notice which
grants rights no rights have been granted.
> <shrug> Probably because of the confrontation tone of the entire
> thread. Everybody's on the offensive, and not willing to admit mistakes.
Oh, for sure I know that is what is going on. Only one person has
admitted a mistake thus far, and it was Marcus Glocker, in his first
post to the thread. After that, Michael got to the point of saying
that he does not believe that Marcus made a mistake. Therefore
Michael has further entrenched his position.
> A private email SHOULD be the first approach for a copyright issue like
> this, regardless of whether its a private person or a corp.
>
>
> > Shall I keep replying until everyone gets it?
>
> Whatever makes you happy :)
It makes me happy to show that I have empathy for a situation where
someone who puts hundreds of hours of work in as a hobby, and to
defend that person. It makes me extremely unhappy that I have to do
so, and that some other people think this is a non-event.
> > <rest deleted, because the above line is so important>
>
> 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.
That said, there were more real issues, and those have been dealt with
in a reply from Marcus, plus the driver now being deleted.
The Italian dude in particular was complaining bitterly in private
mail about the whitespace similarities... good grief, not whitespace
similarities. How SCO of him.
> I understand why you might want to do damage control like this.
The driver is deleted.
What damage specifically would I be trying to control?
I'll tell you -- I would be trying to control the damage of a
community of public hotheads ripping one person to shreds.
The process was unacceptable.
> Theo de Raadt wrote:
> >>> Johannes Berg <[email protected]>
> >>> Joseph Jezak <[email protected]>
> >> We are two members of the reverse engineering team as can be
> >> verified by looking at the specification.
> >
> > And how exactly does seeing this public flogging involve you?
> >
> > Do you feel that Marcus should give up his efforts?
> >
>
> No. You seem to have deleted the portion of my email where I
> suggested that the bcw programmers should feel free to contact us
> (the reverse engineers) about any issues with implementing the specs
> as written. I've re-copied that text below:
>
> > To date, I have not been contacted by any of the bcw programmers
> > regarding clarification of the specification, but I would welcome
> > any questions they might have.
And I ask again -- do you see any reason why the whole rant accusing
Marcus of copyright violation should have been aired so widely,
including landing in your mailboxes?
This one paragraph you are interested in, but the rest sure does not
concern you. So why did he not privately contact Marcus, but felt he
should show a lot of people -- including you? Does knowing this is
happening benefit you? Or was it grandstanding? Or accusation? Or a
lynching?
The vibe is rather anti-BSD. Yes, it will get solved. But the vibe
is very GPL rah rah rah, right?
Since Mickael chose to include you I might as well ask you as well --
Do you feel that Marcus should give up his efforts?
It sounds like a fair question for me to toss out to everyone,
since I was originally mailed... in a public place.
On Thursday 05 April 2007 19:00, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > No. I'd like _you_ to make "your" developers aware of the issue
> > that you'd like to have the openbsd tree clean, in the first place.
>
> I make developers aware. Marcus was aware. He made a few mistakes.
> You don't believe him.
>
> That's fine. We don't believe your public flogging was the kind and
> right way to approach this whole problem.
>
> But the issue is over. The code has been entirely deleted.
>
> I hope you are happy. I am sure Marcus is not happy, because he's
> thrown away about 800 hours of hobby work. But it is easier for him
> to just abandon this, based on the strength of your initial mail.
I'm sorry if the mail sounded too strong. This was not intentional.
But I think I made a great effort to make this clear, though.
I am not out for blood.
> I mean, if I were him, why would I bother going on,
To get your broadcom cards working on bsd??
Really, there's no single other reason to write a driver.
> when there are
> accusations about copyright being based on white space, variable
> names which are the same, or simple "save the registers" algorithms
> which you feel are too similar.
I did _never_ base by arguments on these things. I explicitely
marked these things in the mail as being EXAMPLES for the most
obvious 1:1 copying going on.
> I'd say he did the right thing to give up.
Only if you don't need a Broadcom wireless driver.
--
Greetings Michael.
On Thursday 05 April 2007 04:10, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> Do you feel that Marcus should give up his efforts?
To say it clearly: No!
No, he should _not_ give up. The opposite is true.
He should start to contact us to get relicensing permission from
us to speed up bcw development and stay legal.
--
Greetings Michael.
On Sun, Apr 08, 2007 at 03:50:22PM +0200, Michael Buesch wrote:
> On Sunday 08 April 2007 15:27, Reyk Floeter wrote:
> > Instead of attacking developers of non-GPL free software, you should
> > point your lawyers into another direction to think about ways to
> > include GPL-compatible BSD/ISC code in the Linux kernel without the
> > need for relicensing it. Talk to the Linux maintainers to change this
> > stupid Dual GPL/* policy.
> >
> > It is your choice, you can also rewrite the "OpenHAL" and take my code
> > as a reference. The copyright does not protect the "idea" of the
> > implementation or the algorithms. Feel free to read my code, interpret
> > it and express it differently.
>
> Excuse my ignorance, please, but I don't see where the real problem is.
> What's the problem with taking openHAL and putting it into the yet to
> be written GPLed linux atheros driver, while preserving your copyright
> notices. I don't see how this could violate the BSD license.
>
> Such stuff is going on day by day. One good example of BSD code put into
> code with another license was MS with the NT TCP stack. At least of my
> knowledge that was the FreeBSD stack, until they rewrote it.
>
> So, what's the problem, really? Create a derivative work, where
> the original openHAL parts are still de-facto BSD licensed, but the rest
> is GPLed.
>
I expected that you know the Linux kernel license policies. But you
got it, it doesn't make sense.
reyk
On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:51:03 -0600
Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> Please get your developers off our mailing list, attacking our users
> with one liners. Or should I perhaps just add a cc to misc in future
> mails?
Google suggests that he isn't a Linux developer.
http://tinyurl.com/6hp2x
--
Ciao
Stefano
On Thursday 05 April 2007 20:28, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > > But when dealing with a parallel open source effort, you went right to
> > > the jugular. I bet you deal nicer with companies.
> >
> > There was no deal with you!
>
> I don't understand this sentence of yours.
There was no agreement with you to use my code.
> Do you make deals with companies?
Not yet. Maybe in future. Who knows...
> Do you do those deals publically?
That depends on what the company does.
If the company illegally distributes my code to the public,
I _will_ contact them in public as well.
If they contact me in private _before_ distributing the code,
I will respond in private.
The exact same thing would have been true for you.
But you did _not_ do any effort to contact me before distributing
my code.
> What are you saying?
>
> Was Marcus suppose do to have some sort of deal with you?
The deal was: He asks for relicensing-permission on
a particular faction of my code and I ACK or deny it.
I explained the exact deal more than once.
--
Greetings Michael.
On Friday 06 April 2007 01:34, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > > Cooperation is based on mutual trust.
> > >=20
> > > We don't trust Linux people anymore.
> >
> > I find this comment amusing. Do you expect us to trust you after
> > discovering such blatant license violations?
>
> You're right -- perhaps you should not trust us.
>
> By the way, we are the people who write OpenSSH. Perhaps you should
> not trust it, either.
>
> Will you guys defend Micheal's the point where we public mail to
> absolutely any point at all, just because we are not GPL people?
Please cite where Johannes said something about the GPL.
You make a fool out of yourself, Theo.
--
Greetings Michael.
Theo de Raadt wrote:
>> Theo de Raadt wrote:
>>>> This is a blatant misrepresentation of the emails you've been reading.
>>> So you feel that Michael's "public scolding" approach was the common
>>> sense approach?
>> No, I do not.
>
> Why are you the first person in the entire GPL community to admit that
> what Michael did might have some problems?
<shrug> Probably because of the confrontation tone of the entire
thread. Everybody's on the offensive, and not willing to admit mistakes.
A private email SHOULD be the first approach for a copyright issue like
this, regardless of whether its a private person or a corp.
> Shall I keep replying until everyone gets it?
Whatever makes you happy :)
> <rest deleted, because the above line is so important>
Snipped? I presume, then, you admit you are misrepresenting others'
opinions in this thread.
Jeff
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 21:25:11 +0200
Michael Buesch <[email protected]> wrote:
> This is a lie.
> Read the whole thread again!
He will never do. He has to maintain his outstanding messages/time ratio.
It's awesome that there are people on this world who can think so fast. Or
who don't even need to.
--
Ciao
Stefano
On Thursday 05 April 2007 20:00, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> The most striking thing about this is that I am sure you guys are
> treating Marcus worse than you would treat a company using your code
> against license. You would privately mail a company, I am sure of it.
This is the proof that you read mails in the way you want
them to be. You should indead read my mail and _not_ interpret
your personal foobar into my words.
We do not treat Marcus bad in any way.
The opposite is true. We offered the explicit opportunity to
get (some of the) code relicensed, if he starts to work together
with us.
> Your postings have been simply inhuman.
>
> And I will go out of my way to ensure that anyone in the future
> understands that is our viewpoint on this.
fine.
--
Greetings Michael.
Luis,
I ask you to first disclaim the statements Pavel made. They are
false. He tries to make it seem like I was blocking Reyk from dual
licensing of the Atheros, when that was entirely Reyk's choice.
Please correct Pavel, because his false accusations put the thread in
the wrong direction.
Luis, you should know, since you were one of the persons who pestered
us week by week.
> I personally feel that the fact that it was deleted was due more to
> your temperament than a proper resolution to this.
No, Marcus Glocker decided this entirely on his own accord. I gave
him specific instructions to decide as he sees fit. I told him I did
not want to influence him.
> The fact that the
> driver was deleted is a mistake in my eyes.
If I were to add this to Michael's statements, now Marcus is not just
a liar, a thief, but also mistaken. AND he should spend time to fix
things after he's been called these things. I'm just blown away by
the GPL community's generousity.
> All in all, I see wireless
> as an area where FOSS community does need to work together.
No kidding.
> I have
> said this before and this is why I try to dual license GPL/BSD any
> code I write and encourage others to do so. Due to the lack of
> corporate interest and legal regulatory concerns though [1] I think we
> should start trying to put a bigger effort into working together.
We should. But it isn't happening, because publically one of the (I
will estimate) 10-12 BSD-side wireless developers has just been called
a thief and a liar. If you think there were problems before, just
look at them now.
There is outrage over Michael's approach.
> You
> can call me an idealist but I am trying to do what I can to help FOSS
> with wireless through an operating system agnostic approach. I realize
> I can't convince everyone to do so but I invite those willing GPL
> developers to help by Dual licensing their code as GPL/BSD and by the
> BSD community to not regard us as enemies but simply developers of a
> GPL operating system and as such restricted by its recursive licensing
> constraints.
Maybe that is part of what Michael meant in his message; but such
statements made after accusing Marcus publically means that part of
the message is useless. If Michael wanted to be the big man he could
say "OK, we decided that what Marcus has copied so far is OK, we give
him the rights as long as he puts the following notice up at the top".
But it is clear that Micheal expects that Marcus will now mail him
and ask for this. If so, the joke is on him.
> Please understand that the fact that Linux is under the GPL prohibits
> us from accepting purely BSD licensed code, it's not Linus' decision
> -- that is just the way the license works.
Quite frankly, that is hogwash. It is a matter of interpretation.
And furthermore, none of Reyk's code is under the BSD license. It is
under an ISC license:
/*
* Copyright (c) 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Reyk Floeter <[email protected]>
*
* Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
* purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
* copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
*
* THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
* WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
* MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
* ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
* WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
* ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
* OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
*/
The ISC license is a "all rights are granted except you must leave the text"
license. It is the most minimal step above a pure Public Domain grant.
> Since Linux cannot accept
> purely BSD licensed code it does not mean we do not want to
> collaborate.
In many many mails you have been informed that it isn't BSD licensed,
and yet you keep calling it BSD licensed. If you can't even read,
what kind of collaboration do you expect?
> We can dual license our code though and that is an
> acceptable license for Linux, the kernel.
We? Sure, you can. But Reyk will not dual license his code, and most
of the other people in the BSD community won't either, because then
they receive the occasional patch from a GPL-believer which is ONLY
under the GPL license, and then they are no less screwed than they
would be from the code granted totally freely to companies.
> Fortunately for us BSD
> licensed code allows developers to take that code and GPL their own
> version of the code, by keeping the original copyright intact.
> Unfortunately for you and the entire BSD developer community the GPL
> license does not grant those same rights on GPL licensed code, unless
> dual licensed.
No kidding. Like when someone mails us explicitly GPL-only patches,
which has happened. Therefore many of us reject the entire concept of
dual licensing. It is a fraud which only benefits one side. And when
it benefits only that one side, it makes us a second class citizen, So
you might as well get used to using our ISC-style code.
In the end though, this whole discussion is no longer about licensing,
but about an approach towards informing of problems.
But before you go Luis, be sure to make it clear that Pavel is
lying about the situation with Reyk's code. Reyk never intended
to dual license his code, and Pavel's mail is more than a small
misunderstanding:
> 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.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Bringing up such a lie to try to make
Micheal's actions OK is just ridiculous.
> > But when dealing with a parallel open source effort, you went right to
> > the jugular. I bet you deal nicer with companies.
>
> There was no deal with you!
I don't understand this sentence of yours.
Do you make deals with companies?
Do you do those deals publically?
What are you saying?
Was Marcus suppose do to have some sort of deal with you?
On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 10:08:13PM +0200, Michael Buesch wrote:
> I, Michael Buesch, am one of the maintainers of the GPL'd Linux
> wireless LAN driver for the Broadcom chip (bcm43xx).
> The Copyright holders of bcm43xx (which includes me) want to talk
> to you, OpenBSD bcw developers, about possible GPL license and therefore
> Copyright violations in your bcw driver.
>
> We believe that you might have directly copied code
> out of bcm43xx (licensed under GPL v2), without our explicit permission,
> into bcw (licensed under BSD license).
> There are implementation details in bcm43xx that appear exactly
> the same in bcw. These implementation details clearly don't come
> from the open specifications at bcm-specs.sipsolutions.net
> or bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net.
>
> We have always made and still make a great effort to keep our code clean
> of any Copyright issues (cleanroom design). Please make sure you also do.
>
> A few examples follow of what we think might be GPL violations.
> This list is far from being complete.
Michael,
I am aware that right now a lot of lines in bcw are written in a way
with a too close eye to your code. That's out of question, and I have
already informed Theo about that fact before you got in touch with
us.
I wanted to make some quick progress (maybe too quick), and rewrite
the functions in question after seeing some first success, e.g.
receivment of first frames, which isn't the case right now. But
still, the specs for some functions are so strict, writing tons
of registers in a strict order, some parts will still look similar.
The last thing I want is to start a license war with you guys,
and also I don't want to harm OpenBSD further with this issue.
And of course we want to solve that license issue ASAP.
So, I am suggestion three options:
1. You give me some time and I try to rewrite the code
in question. We keep in touch, and maybe we can split
up both parties in freedom afterwards.
2. Same as option one, but if my time resources keep
shrinking like they do right now, spending weekends
in the office and I can't fix up the driver soon,
I'll drop the driver.
3. We don't come to a point and I'll plain drop the driver
directly, very soon.
Waiting for your reaction.
Regards,
Marcus
--
Marcus Glocker, [email protected], [email protected]
> On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 12:48 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:
>
> > No, your message offered that he can come begging, because that is the
> > best that thieves may do.
> >
> > Come little dog, come beg for forgiveness.
> >
> > You are a very poor example of humankind.
>
> Theo,
>
> 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.
Which OpenBSD devleoper did you feel bad for? Reyk? Reyk was going
to relicence it? HAHAHA. Man have you ever got it wrong. Reyk
totally gets to decide that, since he wrote it -- and he said NO you
repeatedly.
In the end, he asked ME to stop you guys from mailing him.
How do you think you can rewrite history when the person who has sole
license (Reyk) will say your history is totally false?
Reyk was THRILLED that I finally told you guys to get lost
> 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.
The Linux people who wanted our atheros dirver got a numerous NICE
reply messages from me Reyk and me saying NO, THE DRIVER WILL NOT BE
RELICENCED.
It got to the point where we were receiving one message requesting it
every few days, and then you guys even sicked Lessig on us, to have
him request the same. Why did we have to relicence it? Oh my -- we
were told that "No, Linus will not let a BSD driver into the Linux
tree". As if we care for that problem.
It was exceedingly rude how we received the same requests, over and
over and over, week after week after week.
Eventually, yes, we were rude and very strong: OVER OUR DEAD BODIES
THE ATHEROS DRIVER WILL NOT BE RE-LICENSED TO BE GPL OR DUAL. PERIOD.
You guys had a choice to listen the first few times. You were assholes
to request it week after week after week.
Don't go rewriting history. There was never any point in time when
it was going to be relicenced, and if you want to be sorry for what
happene with Reyk, you can go and apologize to him for perstering
him so long.
> Now you are asking us to be sensitive towards somebody who just took the
> code under GPL and put it under BSD license without asking any
> questions, nicely or otherwise.
What Marcus did was an accident. You REFUSE to believe it was an
accident. The driver has now been deleted. Do you feel better?
> I'm sorry, but your Harlequin show is woefully unconvincing and
> out-of-date. Knowing something about you, I think a "sensitive OpenBSD
> developer" is an oxymoron.
>
> I don't want to fan the flames anymore, so it's probably my one and only
> posting regarding this topic, unless you give me a good reason to reply.
> But please don't try.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Pavel Roskin
>
[I'm another bcm43xx maintainer and copyright holder.]
On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:39:33 -0600
Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yes, this driver has other problems though. To begin with, it does
> not even run yet, in any sense. Since it is not actual using code,
> there will be those who argue that the full impact of the GPL does not
> come to bear yet -- noone is "using" the code yet.
Actually, I would be really happy if somebody was "using" the code. We (the
bcm43xx developers) already discussed about dual licensing on Dec,
2005, because we wanted *BSD as well to benefit from our effort. We
then decided not to dual-license any code, because of the reasons
Michael already explained. I thought Michael already expressed our concerns
about BSD license clearly enough, but it looks like he didn't. We aren't
talking about "usage" here, we just don't want proprietary vendors (i.e.
Broadcom) to benefit from our work. I think that we may have different
points of view on this issue, but I think as well that you can understand
our concerns.
> Because right now, in that mail, you've pretty much done Broadcom's
> job for them. You've told the entire BSD community who may want to
> use a driver for this chip later, that because of a few GPL issues you
That's not what I would call "a few GPL issues". Really.
> are willing to use very strong words -- published very widely -- to
> disrupt the efforts of one guy who is trying to do things for them.
You are assuming that we want to disrupt his efforts. I think that this
blatant violation is a big bug for OpenBSD, and it looks you agree on this.
Do you believe in full disclosure, don't you?
> And, you are going to do this using the GPL, even. You did not
> privately mail that developer. No, you basically went public with it.
The bcw developers went public with it. This code was submitted to a
public CVS. With multiple commits. Copying comments. Maintaining
whitespace and variable names. Not even trying to hide that.
> That is how about half the user and developer community will see it.
> They will see your widely posted mail as an overly strong position.
>
> And you have probably royally pissed of a developer working in
> parallel in the same problem space as youself. Would you be happy to
> receive a mail like you just sent? No, you would be really disturbed,
> to your soul.
Personally, I think that what would be more disturbing to my soul is
releasing GPL'd code under a different and incompatible license without even
asking people who wrote it.
> So next time, talk to the specific people, so you don't come off
> as being mean, ok?
Who is mean here? Again, we aren't out for blood. I don't care for who is
mean here. But if you do, you should be a bit more careful before insulting
people. Plus, I think the mail was sent to the specific people for this
issue. Would you please tell me who is not "specific" here?
--
Ciao
Stefano
> > Johannes Berg <[email protected]>
> > Joseph Jezak <[email protected]>
>
> We are two members of the reverse engineering team as can be
> verified by looking at the specification.
And how exactly does seeing this public flogging involve you?
Do you feel that Marcus should give up his efforts?
> > > Your postings have been simply inhuman.
If it weren't for people who devote their lives to software at the
expense of human interaction, then in all likelihood the Free Software
movement as we know it wouldn't exist today. He's not inhuman, just a
different kind of human. (imho of course)
On Sunday 08 April 2007 15:27, Reyk Floeter wrote:
> You either totally misinterpreted my statements or you just want to
> spread the FUD that every OpenBSD developer is mind-controlled by
> Theo. I involved Theo _after_ I denied the various requests to change
> the license of my driver because the various people didn't stop to
> repeat their requests. You involved lawyers to question my code.
>
> Instead of attacking developers of non-GPL free software, you should
> point your lawyers into another direction to think about ways to
> include GPL-compatible BSD/ISC code in the Linux kernel without the
> need for relicensing it. Talk to the Linux maintainers to change this
> stupid Dual GPL/* policy.
>
> It is your choice, you can also rewrite the "OpenHAL" and take my code
> as a reference. The copyright does not protect the "idea" of the
> implementation or the algorithms. Feel free to read my code, interpret
> it and express it differently.
Excuse my ignorance, please, but I don't see where the real problem is.
What's the problem with taking openHAL and putting it into the yet to
be written GPLed linux atheros driver, while preserving your copyright
notices. I don't see how this could violate the BSD license.
Such stuff is going on day by day. One good example of BSD code put into
code with another license was MS with the NT TCP stack. At least of my
knowledge that was the FreeBSD stack, until they rewrote it.
So, what's the problem, really? Create a derivative work, where
the original openHAL parts are still de-facto BSD licensed, but the rest
is GPLed.
> From my point of view GPL software is non-free because I cannot simply
> reuse it in my code. It may work within the Linux world, but everybody
> else is restricted from using it. This is especially a problem when we
> depend on the Linux drivers as the only reference to write drivers for
> OpenBSD.
Well, so is the license. Put your work under the GPL and you are
free to use the code. (Or alternatively ask the copyright holder(s)
to relicense).
--
Greetings Michael.
> > > > Your postings have been simply inhuman.
>
> If it weren't for people who devote their lives to software at the
> expense of human interaction, then in all likelihood the Free Software
> movement as we know it wouldn't exist today. He's not inhuman, just a
> different kind of human. (imho of course)
Almost all the free software is written by teams of humans who try to
be nice to each other. People who do it at the expense of human
interaction are exceedingly rare, and that is as it should be, and by
and large they are exceedingly ineffective because the human element
is an obviously big part.
The first dictionary definition for inhuman is:
1. lacking qualities of sympathy, pity, warmth, compassion, or the like;
cruel; brutal: an inhuman master.
Michael's posting was inhuman, because he had a choice to talk directly
to Marcus.
> I don't understand your reaction, really.
If you don't understand his reaction, Michael, then perhaps you are
not a caring loving human being, sensitive and able to be hurt. I am
surprised if you can't see that roughly half the people on this planet
would do EXACTLY as Marcus has just done.
> If you were really interrested in doing a Broadcom wireless driver for
> openbsd, you would have chosen the option to relicense some code (and
> therefore drop only that code which I refuse to relicense), which I gave
> you.
Oh, let's see... Marcus should have guessed that there was a problem,
he should have guessed that he had made a mistake, and mailed you
BEFORE you let him know, in a public forum. You keep assuming he did
this on purpose. You do realize that by continuing to assume he did
this on purpose, and assuming that he was not trying his best to do
this right, you are basically accusing him of being a thief?
No, I guess you just don't realize that.
> It's a pity. I'd like you to sleep a night over this and rethink
> your decision tomorrow.
Peharps you should sleep a night and decide if your public mail was
actually smart.
> Feel free to contact us to get code relicensed _before_ you re-add
> it to the repository. This will make you and us happy and I'm sure
> you'll have a working driver soon.
Are you absolutely deluded?
Maybe if you apologized to implying he's a thief, in a large public
posting, then he might.
> This will make you and us happy
Why would you want him to make you happy? I thought he just made
you happy, by deleting it. After all, that was one of the options
you gave him. Hell, everytime I re-read your original posting, I
see that what he's done is choose the obvious choice.
> Theo, please _do_ compare the code of bcw and bcm43xx. You will find
> tons of 1:1 copied code.
Yes, like those copyrighted variables names.
> > And you are surprised about what has happened?
>
> Yes I am. I thought you were really interrested in having a Broadcom
> wireless driver for openbsd.
Marcus sure wanted it, and he's been working on it for 6 months. But
some person on the net who does not know how human beings react when
they are called thieves implied he had purposefully stolen code, and
he's so saddened that he is going to throw all that away.
> > Are you living in
> > a cave? Are you not human? Don't you know how people behave when
> > they are publically attacked, and not treated with respectful private
> > discussion to point out their mistakes?
>
> This was not a mistake. bcw developers obviously intentionally
> copied our code.
You just called him a thief, again.
> > His deletion of the code has happened for one reason and one reason
> > alone -- your way of trying to handle this.
>
> I don't agree to this.
> This sounds more like he lost interrest in getting a clean Broadcom
> wireless driver.
Lost interest? I guess you didn't read the commit message.
revision 1.89
date: 2007/04/05 16:25:25; author: mglocker; state: dead; lines: +1 -1
After been attacked by Michael Buesch <[email protected]> because we initially
were using some of their routines in the bcw driver, I decided to stop
working on it. To avoid any further license chit chat I plain drop the
driver.
Note it's 89 revisions, over 6 months. Yeah, he lost interest.
Just like years ago you lost interest in being a loving caring human
being who knows the impact of their words.
Either he's a thief, or he lost interest. Which is it?
On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:56:29 -0600
Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> The Italian dude in particular was complaining bitterly in private
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Should this be considered an offense? What else?
> mail about the whitespace similarities... good grief, not whitespace
> similarities. How SCO of him.
I want to show an example.
Commit message for bcw revision 1.78:
Read the whole SPROM content with a single routine to a own sprom struct.
For those people who have reported about broken MAC address at attach
time, this should fix the problem.
An excerpt of bcw code:
uint8_t bcw_sprom_crc(const uint16_t *sprom)
{
int word;
uint8_t crc = 0xff;
for (word = 0; word < BCW_SPROM_SIZE - 1; word++) {
crc = bcw_sprom_crc8(crc, sprom[word] & 0x00ff);
crc = bcw_sprom_crc8(crc, (sprom[word] & 0xff00) >> 8);
}
crc = bcw_sprom_crc8(crc, sprom[BCW_SPROM_VERSION] & 0x00ff);
crc ^= 0xff;
return (crc);
}
An excerpt of bcm43xx code:
static u8 bcm43xx_sprom_crc(const u16 *sprom)
{
int word;
u8 crc = 0xFF;
for (word = 0; word < BCM43xx_SPROM_SIZE - 1; word++) {
crc = bcm43xx_crc8(crc, sprom[word] & 0x00FF);
crc = bcm43xx_crc8(crc, (sprom[word] & 0xFF00) >> 8);
}
crc = bcm43xx_crc8(crc, sprom[BCM43xx_SPROM_VERSION] & 0x00FF);
crc ^= 0xFF;
return crc;
}
Diff here:
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/ic/Attic/bcw.c.diff?r1=1.77&r2=1.78&f=h
(here you can see that Marcus wrote some code for reading SPROM before this
commit, but then here he replaces what he wrote with bcm43xx code.)
I would like a precise answer here. Do you think that this specific case is
a "mistake"?
--
Ciao
Stefano
Looking at Marcus initial reply, <speculate> when he had not read all
the harsh words that followed the initial mail </speculate>, it seems to
me to be the most open and constructive mail in the whole thread and
what is missing in my inbox is a direct reply to that mail until he
himself replied that he had decided to give up on the project.
While I find it sad that he chose that solution I would have felt rather
disheartened by the discussion that happend in the meantime too.
ciao
Joerg
--
Joerg Mayer <[email protected]>
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that
works. Some say that should read Microsoft instead of technology.
> 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.
On 4/5/07, Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 12:48 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> >
> > > No, your message offered that he can come begging, because that is the
> > > best that thieves may do.
> > >
> > > Come little dog, come beg for forgiveness.
> > >
> > > You are a very poor example of humankind.
> >
> > Theo,
> >
> > 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.
>
> Which OpenBSD devleoper did you feel bad for? Reyk? Reyk was going
> to relicence it? HAHAHA. Man have you ever got it wrong. Reyk
> totally gets to decide that, since he wrote it -- and he said NO you
> repeatedly.
>
> In the end, he asked ME to stop you guys from mailing him.
>
> How do you think you can rewrite history when the person who has sole
> license (Reyk) will say your history is totally false?
>
> Reyk was THRILLED that I finally told you guys to get lost
>
> > 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.
>
> The Linux people who wanted our atheros dirver got a numerous NICE
> reply messages from me Reyk and me saying NO, THE DRIVER WILL NOT BE
> RELICENCED.
>
> It got to the point where we were receiving one message requesting it
> every few days, and then you guys even sicked Lessig on us, to have
> him request the same. Why did we have to relicence it? Oh my -- we
> were told that "No, Linus will not let a BSD driver into the Linux
> tree". As if we care for that problem.
>
> It was exceedingly rude how we received the same requests, over and
> over and over, week after week after week.
>
> Eventually, yes, we were rude and very strong: OVER OUR DEAD BODIES
> THE ATHEROS DRIVER WILL NOT BE RE-LICENSED TO BE GPL OR DUAL. PERIOD.
>
> You guys had a choice to listen the first few times. You were assholes
> to request it week after week after week.
>
> Don't go rewriting history. There was never any point in time when
> it was going to be relicenced, and if you want to be sorry for what
> happene with Reyk, you can go and apologize to him for perstering
> him so long.
>
> > Now you are asking us to be sensitive towards somebody who just took the
> > code under GPL and put it under BSD license without asking any
> > questions, nicely or otherwise.
>
> What Marcus did was an accident. You REFUSE to believe it was an
> accident. The driver has now been deleted. Do you feel better?
I personally feel that the fact that it was deleted was due more to
your temperament than a proper resolution to this. The fact that the
driver was deleted is a mistake in my eyes. All in all, I see wireless
as an area where FOSS community does need to work together. I have
said this before and this is why I try to dual license GPL/BSD any
code I write and encourage others to do so. Due to the lack of
corporate interest and legal regulatory concerns though [1] I think we
should start trying to put a bigger effort into working together. You
can call me an idealist but I am trying to do what I can to help FOSS
with wireless through an operating system agnostic approach. I realize
I can't convince everyone to do so but I invite those willing GPL
developers to help by Dual licensing their code as GPL/BSD and by the
BSD community to not regard us as enemies but simply developers of a
GPL operating system and as such restricted by its recursive licensing
constraints.
Please understand that the fact that Linux is under the GPL prohibits
us from accepting purely BSD licensed code, it's not Linus' decision
-- that is just the way the license works. Since Linux cannot accept
purely BSD licensed code it does not mean we do not want to
collaborate. We can dual license our code though and that is an
acceptable license for Linux, the kernel. Fortunately for us BSD
licensed code allows developers to take that code and GPL their own
version of the code, by keeping the original copyright intact.
Unfortunately for you and the entire BSD developer community the GPL
license does not grant those same rights on GPL licensed code, unless
dual licensed. This is just the nature of our differences and we need
to understand this is no ones fault, and that ultimately individual
copyright holders can act differently.
[1] http://linuxwireless.org/en/vendors/VendorSupport
Luis
> > Cooperation is not built on that. Maybe you specifically don't care
> > about cooperation, but I am sure there are others who do. So perhaps
> > watch your words.
>
> How you can *possibly* expect cooperation from a group of people who
> * just discovered that somebody has taken large parts of their code
Well, you start to expect that mistakes happen, and you privately contact
them.
> * removed their attribution
The attribution was never to be added, because a couple of functions
were copied in temporarily to help development of other functions, and
then they were accidentally commited.
This was a mistake, but no private mail about it happened.
> * relicensed them under a much more permissive license
They were accidentally copied, and then a public mail was made to a bunch
of large mailing lists.
> * /then/ claims that it was "an honest mistake"
If the claims aren't believed, then you are right there can be no
cooperation, can there. But someone has to believe claims. If I
don't believe your claims that you aren't a rabbit, it doesn't make
you a rabbit. Someone has to try to accept claims of fair development.
If you don't believe us, how about this claim: OpenSSH on Linux has
no major holes. Go ahead, keep using it. The fact is, you have to
accept that some claims are done on fair grounds. If you don't, then
no, you are right -- no cooperation is possible.
> * also claims that the license (GPL in this case) isn't relevant
> because the code doesn't "run" (hint: GPL covers redistribution too,
> no matter if the code runs or not)
Accidents were made. But you don't believe that. How does cooperation
start?
> is totally beyond me.
>
> Yet Michael offered it.
He offered something after slagging someone to bits. That's not a real
offer.
How does cooperation start, if the first statements are about theft
and lies?
It doesn't. And you prefer it that way?
> You made a drama out of a simple issue.
Actually Michael and his friends made a drama out of a simple issue;
so simple that it would have been dealt with in private within days.
And everyone would have looked good about it, and felt great about it.
Stefano, I am not inflaming. I am rightly justified in complaining
that someone has been treated very badly, for no good reason.
Cooperation is not built on that. Maybe you specifically don't care
about cooperation, but I am sure there are others who do. So perhaps
watch your words.
> On Thursday 05 April 2007 04:10, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > Do you feel that Marcus should give up his efforts?
>
> To say it clearly: No!
>
> No, he should _not_ give up. The opposite is true.
It's too late. He has given up, because of your first mail.
He has already deleted his work from our tree.
> He should start to contact us to get relicensing permission from
> us to speed up bcw development and stay legal.
What bullshit. He should contact you, when he does not known that
he's been found to have made mistakes?
Do you even know the word 'mistake'?
If you make a mistake, sometimes you don't know it has been made
until someone tells you that you have made a mistake.
And you did tell him. In fact, you told 2000 other people too.
And you are surprised about what has happened? Are you living in
a cave? Are you not human? Don't you know how people behave when
they are publically attacked, and not treated with respectful private
discussion to point out their mistakes?
His deletion of the code has happened for one reason and one reason
alone -- your way of trying to handle this.
[Please stop this. This doesn't lead anywhere. But as long as you need
answers, I'll try to provide you with them.]
On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 19:12:06 -0600
Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Copyrighted whitespaces and variable names, you mean, right?
> >
> > No.
>
> What does that "No." mean. Are you being obtuse? I am quoting you:
[...]
> If whitespacing and variable names do not matter for the larger issue
> at hand, then I suggest you don't bring it up. Why would you bring it
> up? Because you want to accuse. You don't want to see these issues
> solved in the right way (whatever that will be). You want to accuse,
> by bringing up whitespace. Why else would you bring up whitespace?
I don't want to accuse anybody. Please see the context. I was trying to
explain why I think bcw developers went public about this issue even
before we noticed about it, and this seems to imply direct copy. (But hey,
I'm not against direct copy, even! I just agree with Michael about this.)
> It should be obvious to anyone who actually goes and reads it, that
> the remainder Marcus' driver shows that he IS TRYING TO TAKE A GOOD
> FAITH APPROACH TOWARDS LICENSING.
I _think_ and hope this.
> Michael's initial overly public statemen did not dispute Marcus
> obviously tried to do the right thing, but your agressiveness DOES
> dispute it. Your sentence:
>
> > Not even trying to hide that.
>
> Is exceedingly agressive. If you have an agenda here, please make
> it clear.
I'm really sorry if this has been perceived as aggressive. I don't want to
be aggressive. See above, for the reason why I wrote this sentence.
> Right about now I think you (Stefano) don't understand that every word
> you say is leading certain people to abandon even trying to write an
> alternative Broadcom driver.
I can't really agree with this. I think you should at least explain why.
> And ... if what you really want is that another Broadcom driver does
> not come into existance, then just say so. If that is your agenda,
> say so loud and clear, so that we can know.
My agenda:
https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/bcm43xx-dev/2005-December/000816.html
--
Ciao
Stefano
[I'll just try to help further discussion providing IMHO useful informa=
tion.
It looks like you didn't even read my message before replying, but that=
's
not the problem. The problem is that repeating again the same things
doesn't lead anywhere, so I hope somebody else will contribute to
discussion.]
On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:29:44 -0600
Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> How about we start with the following people, who do not seem like th=
e
> specific people to mail.
>=20
> Martin Langer <[email protected]>
He's a bcm43xx copyright holder.
> Danny van Dyk <[email protected]>
He's a bcm43xx copyright holder.
> Andreas Jaggi <[email protected]>
He's a bcm43xx copyright holder.
> Larry Finger <[email protected]>
He's a bcm43xx copyright holder.
> [email protected]
He's an OpenSolaris developer interested in bcw for developing a driver=
for
Broadcom wireless devices. We thought it would be nice to tell him abou=
t
this issue.
> Johannes Berg <[email protected]>
He's a reverse engineer, he may help with discussion.
> Joseph Jezak <[email protected]>
He's a reverse engineer, he may help with discussion.
> John Linville <[email protected]>
He's the Linux kernel maintainer for the wireless subsystem.
> Greg kh <[email protected]>
He is the current Linux kernel maintainer for the PCI, USB, I=B2C, driv=
er
core and the sysfs kernel subsystems.
> [email protected]
bcm43xx developers.
> [email protected]
Linux wireless developers.
> [email protected]
"In the past 16 months, gpl-violations.org has helped uncover and negot=
iate
more than 30 out-of-court settlement agreements."
> Copyrighted whitespaces and variable names, you mean, right?
No.
--
Ciao
Stefano
> > How does cooperation start, if the first statements are about theft
> > and lies?
> >=20
> > It doesn't. And you prefer it that way?
>
> Since "cooperation" in your terms seems to imply living quietly with
> somebody blatantly stealing and relicensing code I guess the only
> possible answer to that is "yes".
Cooperation is based on mutual trust.
We don't trust Linux people anymore.
Theo de Raadt wrote:
> I mean, if I were him, why would I bother going on, when there are
> accusations about copyright being based on white space, variable
> names which are the same, or simple "save the registers" algorithms
> which you feel are too similar.
This is a blatant misrepresentation of the emails you've been reading.
Jeff
On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 07:41:07AM +0200, Marcus Glocker wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 10:08:13PM +0200, Michael Buesch wrote:
>
> > I, Michael Buesch, am one of the maintainers of the GPL'd Linux
> > wireless LAN driver for the Broadcom chip (bcm43xx).
> > The Copyright holders of bcm43xx (which includes me) want to talk
> > to you, OpenBSD bcw developers, about possible GPL license and therefore
> > Copyright violations in your bcw driver.
> >
> > We believe that you might have directly copied code
> > out of bcm43xx (licensed under GPL v2), without our explicit permission,
> > into bcw (licensed under BSD license).
> > There are implementation details in bcm43xx that appear exactly
> > the same in bcw. These implementation details clearly don't come
> > from the open specifications at bcm-specs.sipsolutions.net
> > or bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net.
> >
> > We have always made and still make a great effort to keep our code clean
> > of any Copyright issues (cleanroom design). Please make sure you also do.
> >
> > A few examples follow of what we think might be GPL violations.
> > This list is far from being complete.
>
> Michael,
>
> I am aware that right now a lot of lines in bcw are written in a way
> with a too close eye to your code. That's out of question, and I have
> already informed Theo about that fact before you got in touch with
> us.
>
> I wanted to make some quick progress (maybe too quick), and rewrite
> the functions in question after seeing some first success, e.g.
> receivment of first frames, which isn't the case right now. But
> still, the specs for some functions are so strict, writing tons
> of registers in a strict order, some parts will still look similar.
>
> The last thing I want is to start a license war with you guys,
> and also I don't want to harm OpenBSD further with this issue.
> And of course we want to solve that license issue ASAP.
>
> So, I am suggestion three options:
>
> 1. You give me some time and I try to rewrite the code
> in question. We keep in touch, and maybe we can split
> up both parties in freedom afterwards.
>
> 2. Same as option one, but if my time resources keep
> shrinking like they do right now, spending weekends
> in the office and I can't fix up the driver soon,
> I'll drop the driver.
>
> 3. We don't come to a point and I'll plain drop the driver
> directly, very soon.
>
> Waiting for your reaction.
>
> Regards,
> Marcus
OK, I decided to go for option 3:
***
From: Marcus Glocker <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 10:25:25 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src
CVSROOT: /cvs
Module name: src
Changes by: [email protected] 2007/04/05 10:25:25
Modified files:
sys/conf : files
sys/dev/pci : files.pci
sys/dev/cardbus: files.cardbus
Removed files:
share/man/man4 : bcw.4
sys/dev/ic : bcw.c bcwreg.h bcwvar.h
sys/dev/pci : if_bcw_pci.c
sys/dev/cardbus: if_bcw_cardbus.c
Log message:
After been attacked by Michael Buesch <[email protected]> because we initially
were using some of their routines in the bcw driver, I decided to stop
working on it. To avoid any further license chit chat I plain drop the
driver.
***
Happy now?
It's a pleasure to see how the OpenSource community stands together,
and starting public wars instead of talking directly to the people
involved.
Marcus
--
Marcus Glocker, [email protected], [email protected]
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 15:33 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> 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 you're putting things out of context and order again, which
we've all seen enough in this thread; but let me set this straight:
When we discovered that the driver looked similar, we first looked for
instances of code that were apparently copied (as Marcus claims "a lot
of lines in bcw are written in a way with a too close eye to your
code.") At that point we still assumed they actually were just rewritten
versions of the same functions.
However, discovering, for example, an implementation (!) of an abstract
state machine (yes, don't explain to me again how you cannot copyright a
state machine) that is exactly identical to the implementation in
bcm43xx when the description in the specs basically looks like an
octagon, we decided to look further, and discovered things like:
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/ic/Attic/bcw.c.diff?r1=1.77&r2=1.78
where original code that Jon Simola wrote from the specs (!) is ripped
out and replaced by something that comes straight from bcm43xx.
And at that point, still wondering if it was just written similarly,
Stefano started comparing it on a much lower level and discovered that
there's just no way that the seemingly similar code could have been
rewritten and not copied since that would imply that there's at least
some difference except for a quick s/bcm43xx/bcw/g and re-editing of
some strings.
So that's how we got to whitespace. For the record.
johannes
> I'm sorry if the mail sounded too strong. This was not intentional.
It sure as hell was intentional; the minute you assumed it was not an
ACCIDENT, and you decided to go public, it became 100% intentional.
You even gave him choices, and having brought it public, you were
telling him to make that choice publically.
Well, he has made the expected choice. A choice almost every person
on this planet would make.
> But I think I made a great effort to make this clear, though.
> I am not out for blood.
And I guess that makes it ok.
The most striking thing about this is that I am sure you guys are
treating Marcus worse than you would treat a company using your code
against license. You would privately mail a company, I am sure of it.
Your postings have been simply inhuman.
And I will go out of my way to ensure that anyone in the future
understands that is our viewpoint on this.
I won't reply to your mail anymore, as you are not interrested
in a real solution to this. Instead you write things like that:
On Thursday 05 April 2007 20:48, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> You are a very poor example of humankind.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of
copyright and GPL violation.
I could say similiar things to you, but I don't.
I wrote the initial mail to get the issue resolved, but
not insult you.
Yet, you think it's my turn to be "human" and so on.
But why did _you_ not be human and asked before using
our stuff? Ah, I know, it was a mistake...
At least in your opinion.
--
Greetings Michael.
> Johannes Berg <[email protected]>
> Joseph Jezak <[email protected]>
We are two members of the reverse engineering team as can be
verified by looking at the specification.
> This infighting between two teams trying to support the same chipset
> is a complete mockery of the publicness of the original reverse
> engineering effort.
As one of the reverse engineers, the reason for the openness of
writing the specification was to ensure that the Chinese Wall method
was maintained.
To date, I have not been contacted by any of the bcw programmers
regarding clarification of the specification, but I would welcome
any questions they might have.
-Joe
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 17:23 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> Cooperation is based on mutual trust.
>
> We don't trust Linux people anymore.
I find this comment amusing. Do you expect us to trust you after
discovering such blatant license violations?
johannes
On Thursday 05 April 2007 20:32, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> Or are you now going to say that all the functions he
> is using are OK to use?
No!
I decide this on a case-by-case base as you OpenBSD guys contact
me and ask "Is it OK to you to use this particular fraction of code...".
I wrote that in the very first mail.
> No, you wanted him to come begging,
I want you to respect my copyright. Fullstop.
And if he wants to use my GPL code in his BSD project, he has no
other legal opportunity than asking me for permission.
Same goes for other code that is copyrighted by the other bcm43xx
developers.
--
Greetings Michael.
> > To be honest it is completely beyond me how somebody manages
> > to read code, considers it usefull (and thus has read the code in such a way
> > that he was searching for something usefull), copy'n'paste the code and com=
> > mits
> > the code to cvs. And at the end of the day claims that it is an accident.
>
> As I understand it, Marcus' process involved borrowing a few pieces of
> the GPL codebase during his development process, so that he could
> write further stubs in other parts. Then his process was supposed to
> involve him commiting the pieces he had written himself, but not the
> momentarily written GPL parts. And that is where a mistake happened;
> as I understand it.
>
> I don't think he intentionally did it.
Ok, so it was only the commit that was perhaps accidental, it does mean
that he should be more carefull about what he is exactly committing.
(A nice idea would be to double check the commit by reading the commit-mail
if it is being generated, that has helped me on multiple occassions for detecting
a problem in my commits)
> I think anyone who thinks he intentionally did it should give him a
> phone call and judge from the voice conversation with him if he did.
> I invite one person from here to do it. Anyone willing to?
>
> Otherwise, I warn you -- you are making a rather strong statement of
> accusation.
Well normally I am not the person making very strong accusations into any directions,
but in this case I consider the accusations that come from my mail justified especially
regarding your wish to keep the discussion private to resolve these kinds of issues
peacefully. I do know what you understand by those private discussions to resolve issues
"peacefully", and it basically comes down to having the same effect that is happening now
only on a smaller scale and more one-sides (from your direction when you don't get what you want).
The benefit from that private discussion is that nobody outside of that discussion
knows what went on, and what you understand with "civilized" discussions.
> > > It was an accident for him to commit it. =A0But it was no accident you
> > > decided to make a public fuss about it. =A0Now you have your public
> > > fuss.
> >
> > Everybody can make his own choice on the manner in which the violation is b=
> > eing
> > reported. Yes, Michael could have send a private mail, but he could also ha=
> > ve made
> > the violation even more public by adding some mail address that would have =
> > started
> > an even bigger flamewar.
> > But note that 75% of the people following this thread would not have taken =
> > too much
> > interest into this violation when you did not jump into the trenches and st=
> > arting to insult
> > people in order to make a big fuzz about it
>
> I am only here to point out that a gang of people publically jumping on
> ONE DEVELOPER is an unacceptable process in any 'community'.
True a gang of people jumping on 1 person is unacceptable, unfortunately
for you I don't think that has happened to your developer...
You jumped into the discussion when 1 man (on hehalf of his team) send a mail
to 1 other man, and CC'ed several other people that one way or another where
involved or should be aware of the issue.
After that the multiple replies from the Linux community were send in response to
your mails. You can check that yourself by looking who everybody has in the TO field
of the email, the one developer you are defending has been (except for 2 or 3 mails)
in the CC list, all other mails have been directed to you.
> I am very sure that most of the senior Linux developers have the maturity
> to try a personal mail to someone who they see a problem with.
Like I said in my previous mail, everybody has his methods for dealing
with a particular problem. Some do it privately, other try to involve more
people (who are one way or another are involved in the situation) to resolve
the problem and trying to find a solution.
> By sending a private mail that was so strongly worded, Michael showed that
> he lacks that maturity.
See me above statement, it has nothing to do with maturity it has everything to do
with making a choice that you feel is best for everybody.
> > You have your reasons for wanting a discussion about the GPL violation priv=
> > ate, Michael
> > had his reasons for making more people aware of the situation. Just because=
> > somebody
> > does not share the same opinion as you don't make him "inhumane", "harming =
> > cooperation
> > between open source projects". Neither is it true that somebody is
> > "Not being supportive to the open source community" when he cannot fulfill =
> > your request/demand.
>
> His mail was without any empathy, and shows a lack of understanding of the
> human mode of operation.
*sigh* ok lets rephrase my sentence then:
Just becausr somebody does not share the same opinion as you don't make him "inhumane",
"lacking emphathy", "lack of understanding of the human mode of operation" or
"harming cooperation between open source projects".
Neither is it true that somebody is "Not being supportive to the open source community"
when he cannot fulfill your request/demand.
I hope this point is now clear enough.
> > I wonder what upsets you most, the fact that openBSD is not perfect in term=
> > s of that the code
> > contains a GPL violation or that you were forced into a public debate about=
> > this while you prefer
> > to flame and insult people privately.
>
>
> OpenBSD is not perfect, no, not at all. Neither is OpenSSH.
I assume that means that you are indeed most upset that your were forced into
a public debate about this while you prefer to flame and insult people privately.
I wonder why you keep bringing openSSH into this discussion, we already _know_ that you
and your team of developers wrote that. And everybody does use openSSH. But apparently
your ego needs those facts to be confirmed quite often.
Ivo
> Please understand that the fact that Linux is under the GPL prohibits
> us from accepting purely BSD licensed code, it's not Linus' decision
> -- that is just the way the license works.
Just to make it clear to anyone that this is not the way the GPL
works, I want to point you all to a little known directory called
binutils/gprof/
This contains files like i386.c which starts as you can see below.
So you can see that the GPL does not prohibit mixing GPL'd files and
3-term BSD licenses. Who prohibits it? Linus. Or someone near him,
with an agenda. It is a policy decision. So waving around the GPL
and saying things like you do above, in bad faith, is not cool.
If you go grep for 'Regents' through other FSF source distributions
you can find many more 3-term BSD licensed code all over the place.
So don't lie to us Luis, pretty please? If 3-term BSD is good enough
for the the FSF, then we can justly come to the conclusion that this
"no BSD code in Linux" problem is in fact just Linus' decision.
---
/*
* Copyright (c) 1983, 1993, 2001
* The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
* may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
* without specific prior written permission.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
* ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
* IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
* ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
* FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
* DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
* OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
* HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
* LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
* OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
* SUCH DAMAGE.
*/
#include "gprof.h"
#include "search_list.h"
#include "source.h"
#include "symtab.h"
#include "cg_arcs.h"
#include "corefile.h"
#include "hist.h"
static int i386_iscall PARAMS ((unsigned char *));
void i386_find_call PARAMS ((Sym *, bfd_vma, bfd_vma));
static int
i386_iscall (ip)
...
On Thursday 05 April 2007 19:25, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> But when dealing with a parallel open source effort, you went right to
> the jugular. I bet you deal nicer with companies.
There was no deal with you!
You simply took the code.
> But you, sir, are not in the group of people who try to nicely get
> problems results. You publically kick people who make mistakes.
I do not believe this can be called a mistake. It was intentional.
You cannot copy code by mistake.
--
Greetings Michael.
On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:10:09 -0600
Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> No, Marcus Glocker decided this entirely on his own accord. I gave
> him specific instructions to decide as he sees fit. I told him I did
> not want to influence him.
Oh, and sure you didn't, with your personal flamewar!
You made a drama out of a simple issue. We have been so stupid to follow
you.
So, what's driving you crazy right now, sorted by relevance:
1) we went public;
2) we don't believe that Marcus copied code by mistake;
3) we are inhuman and we lack empathy.
About the third one, we can't do anything. Coding bcm43xx made us inhuman.
Plus, we are engineers or even worse species. We even use GPL. Really sorry
about that.
Now, about the first and second ones. Would telling you you are right help
you to stop whining and let people focus on the real issue? In case, I
would promptly tell you that you are right and we are wrong.
--
Ciao
Stefano
Hi,
I'm not subscribed to this list but I followed the discussion in the
public archives. My name and my work on the free Atheros driver (ar5k,
also known as "OpenHAL") has been mentioned in this thread and I'd
like to comment some things.
On 2007-04-05 19:31:27 GMT, Pavel Roskin 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.
>
> Now you are asking us to be sensitive towards somebody who just took the
> code under GPL and put it under BSD license without asking any
> questions, nicely or otherwise.
>
> I'm sorry, but your Harlequin show is woefully unconvincing and
> out-of-date. Knowing something about you, I think a "sensitive OpenBSD
> developer" is an oxymoron.
>
I'm sure that somebody forwarded the mails from our private
discussions to you where I clearly denied the requests to change the
license of my driver. I do not believe in dual licensing, and it would
make my driver less free. It does not add a benefit for us but it does
introduce additional problems. I don't want to take care of GPL
licensing issues, and I do not want to distinguish between BSD/ISC
code on the one hand and GPL code on the other hand.
Let me repeat the very simple license terms again:
* Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
* purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
* copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
I clearly expressed in a mail from 2006/08/24 that I do support the
idea of having a BLOB-free driver in your OS. I said that "you can
use, modify, distribute, print, paint, sing, ... my code but please
keep the copyright notice and the license.". I also like to thank Nick
Kossifidis because he was the _only_ developer working on a Linux port
who stopped talking about licensing blah and send me some code,
feedback, and bug reports.
But you make an idiot out of me.
You either totally misinterpreted my statements or you just want to
spread the FUD that every OpenBSD developer is mind-controlled by
Theo. I involved Theo _after_ I denied the various requests to change
the license of my driver because the various people didn't stop to
repeat their requests. You involved lawyers to question my code.
Instead of attacking developers of non-GPL free software, you should
point your lawyers into another direction to think about ways to
include GPL-compatible BSD/ISC code in the Linux kernel without the
need for relicensing it. Talk to the Linux maintainers to change this
stupid Dual GPL/* policy.
It is your choice, you can also rewrite the "OpenHAL" and take my code
as a reference. The copyright does not protect the "idea" of the
implementation or the algorithms. Feel free to read my code, interpret
it and express it differently.
>From my point of view GPL software is non-free because I cannot simply
reuse it in my code. It may work within the Linux world, but everybody
else is restricted from using it. This is especially a problem when we
depend on the Linux drivers as the only reference to write drivers for
OpenBSD.
--//--
On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 10:08:13PM +0200, Michael Buesch wrote:
> [citing Michael, Date unknown]
> "What if Broadcom decides to take our LO measure state machine and
> put it into the original driver? (The Rev Engineers told me they have
> a very different weird solution for this in their code).
> I really don't want to see this happen."
>
So what? Nobody prevents Broadcom to implement a LO measure state
machine based on your idea. And it is totally legal.
It appears to me that you intend to sign an agreement with Broadcom to
sell them a dual GPL/non-free license to use your Linux driver without
restrictions. Isn't it the main purpose of the dual GPL/* licensing
strategy? Why should you care otherwise that they can just use your
code?
Reyk
Theo de Raadt wrote:
>>> Johannes Berg <[email protected]>
>>> Joseph Jezak <[email protected]>
>> We are two members of the reverse engineering team as can be
>> verified by looking at the specification.
>
> And how exactly does seeing this public flogging involve you?
>
> Do you feel that Marcus should give up his efforts?
>
No. You seem to have deleted the portion of my email where I
suggested that the bcw programmers should feel free to contact us
(the reverse engineers) about any issues with implementing the specs
as written. I've re-copied that text below:
> To date, I have not been contacted by any of the bcw programmers
> regarding clarification of the specification, but I would welcome
> any questions they might have.
-Joe
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 12:48 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> No, your message offered that he can come begging, because that is the
> best that thieves may do.
>
> Come little dog, come beg for forgiveness.
>
> You are a very poor example of humankind.
Theo,
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.
Now you are asking us to be sensitive towards somebody who just took the
code under GPL and put it under BSD license without asking any
questions, nicely or otherwise.
I'm sorry, but your Harlequin show is woefully unconvincing and
out-of-date. Knowing something about you, I think a "sensitive OpenBSD
developer" is an oxymoron.
I don't want to fan the flames anymore, so it's probably my one and only
posting regarding this topic, unless you give me a good reason to reply.
But please don't try.
--
Regards,
Pavel Roskin
> > The way they chose to "notify" Marcus shows a complete lack of
> > respect for Marcus.
>
> The way OpenBSD folks used our code was a complete lack of respect
> for us. Fullstop.
You refuse to accept it was an accident. Therefore we refuse to
accept that your public posting was an accident. You publically
attacked another open source developer for a specific purpose. You
are an inhuman asshole, out to make a public fuss about something,
when you had a choice to tell him in private.
You got what you wanted -- the driver has been deleted. But you feel
you must continue to say that someone you called a thief (because you
believe it was not an accident, and a liar (because you don't believe
him when he says it was an accident) had other choices? Are you
deluded?
> > As Theo expressed in the thread, there is NO
> > DOUBT that they would have notified a corporation privately. Why
> > would you treat an individual, working on the code out of their own
> > desire, with less respect?
>
> This is a lie.
> Read the whole thread again!
Jason Dixon is a liar because he doubts something? How can he be a
liar if he is stating something he believes? Let me rephrase it: He
believes you would treat a company better than you treated Marcus.
Where's the lie?
> It's a pleasure to see how the OpenSource community stands together,
> and starting public wars instead of talking directly to the people
> involved.
I hope all of you BCW people are proud of yourself, especially each
and everytime you use OpenSSH, which was written by our team. Where
we freely give without restriction; you publically flog. You wag your
beloved GPL like a stick.
For the record, Michael never did reply to my posting.
> The main aim right now for you is to deflect as much attention as
> possible away from the fact that someone was caught red handed putting
> GPL'd code into a BSD driver.
No, my goal is to make sure that one community can't gang up on one
person in a public blame fest, and totally ruin that future value that
person might put into the community.
The driver is gone. Since it is gone, there is no more infringement.
What there is though, is a lot of resentment.
And the Linux community should think very carefully about where that
resentment is coming from.
This was handled very poorly.
David, if you found a piece of your code in some other tree, under a
different license, would your first point of engatement be a public or
private mail?
Please, tell us.
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 15:25 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> Cooperation is not built on that. Maybe you specifically don't care
> about cooperation, but I am sure there are others who do. So perhaps
> watch your words.
How you can *possibly* expect cooperation from a group of people who
* just discovered that somebody has taken large parts of their code
* removed their attribution
* relicensed them under a much more permissive license
* /then/ claims that it was "an honest mistake"
* also claims that the license (GPL in this case) isn't relevant
because the code doesn't "run" (hint: GPL covers redistribution too,
no matter if the code runs or not)
is totally beyond me.
Yet Michael offered it.
johannes
On Thursday 05 April 2007 21:29, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > > The way they chose to "notify" Marcus shows a complete lack of
> > > respect for Marcus.
> >
> > The way OpenBSD folks used our code was a complete lack of respect
> > for us. Fullstop.
>
> You refuse to accept it was an accident. Therefore we refuse to
> accept that your public posting was an accident.
Both exactly right.
> You publically
> attacked another open source developer for a specific purpose. You
> are an inhuman asshole, out to make a public fuss about something,
> when you had a choice to tell him in private.
*clap clap clap*
Nice show, Theo. Insulting people is always the way to get an
issue solved.
> You got what you wanted -- the driver has been deleted.
I never said I wanted the driver to be deleted. Re-read the whole
thread please. But switch your "turn the meaning of sentences over" device
off first, please.
> > > As Theo expressed in the thread, there is NO
> > > DOUBT that they would have notified a corporation privately. Why
> > > would you treat an individual, working on the code out of their own
> > > desire, with less respect?
> >
> > This is a lie.
> > Read the whole thread again!
>
> Jason Dixon is a liar because he doubts something? How can he be a
This sentence is the prove that you don't read mails exactly before
replying. Jason did not "doubt something". He wrote [citing]:
"there is NO DOUBT that they would have notified a corporation privately"
Note the capitalized words.
This is a plain lie. There is no special exception from me to companies.
I already said that in another mail.
> liar if he is stating something he believes? Let me rephrase it: He
> believes you would treat a company better than you treated Marcus.
>
> Where's the lie?
--
Greetings Michael.
Hello, Reyk!
Quoting Reyk Floeter <[email protected]>:
> I'm sure that somebody forwarded the mails from our private
> discussions to you where I clearly denied the requests to change the
> license of my driver. I do not believe in dual licensing, and it would
> make my driver less free. It does not add a benefit for us but it does
> introduce additional problems. I don't want to take care of GPL
> licensing issues, and I do not want to distinguish between BSD/ISC
> code on the one hand and GPL code on the other hand.
[skip]
> But you make an idiot out of me
>
> You either totally misinterpreted my statements or you just want to
> spread the FUD that every OpenBSD developer is mind-controlled by
> Theo. I involved Theo _after_ I denied the various requests to change
> the license of my driver because the various people didn't stop to
> repeat their requests. You involved lawyers to question my code.
OK, I appreciate your explanation. Indeed, I knew only a part of the story, and
what I knew is very different from what you are writing now.
I did avoid your name and the words like "mind-controlled" in the original post.
I'm sorry that your name was mentioned in the discussion and that you are
feeling uneasy about my comments.
If you re-read my post, you'll see that I was actually sympathizing with you.
I would really like to stop this thread, because it's watched by too many
people, and any wrong word can do more damage. I do hope that we'll cooperate
on the blob-free Atheros driver.
--
Regards,
Pavel Roskin
On Thursday 05 April 2007 19:05, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> > He should start to contact us to get relicensing permission from
> > us to speed up bcw development and stay legal.
>
> What bullshit. He should contact you, when he does not known that
> he's been found to have made mistakes?
>
> Do you even know the word 'mistake'?
>
> If you make a mistake, sometimes you don't know it has been made
> until someone tells you that you have made a mistake.
I can't see how you can copy code from bcm43xx to bcw by mistake.
Really, I want to explicitely state that in my opinion the 1:1
copying was going on intentionally. This is impossible to be
a mistake.
Theo, please _do_ compare the code of bcw and bcm43xx. You will find
tons of 1:1 copied code.
> And you are surprised about what has happened?
Yes I am. I thought you were really interrested in having a Broadcom
wireless driver for openbsd.
> Are you living in
> a cave? Are you not human? Don't you know how people behave when
> they are publically attacked, and not treated with respectful private
> discussion to point out their mistakes?
This was not a mistake. bcw developers obviously intentionally
copied our code. If you read the bcw commit logs and compare
bcm43xx and bcw code you will see what I mean. Yes, _really_ do this!
Compare it and you'll get my point.
> His deletion of the code has happened for one reason and one reason
> alone -- your way of trying to handle this.
I don't agree to this.
This sounds more like he lost interrest in getting a clean Broadcom
wireless driver.
--
Greetings Michael.
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
On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:42:34 -0600
Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> wrote:
> Again, your assumption is that he did it on purpose, and thus, you
> are calling him a thief.
_____ _ _ ___ _____ _____ _
|_ _| | | |_ _| ____| ___| |
| | | |_| || || _| | |_ | |
| | | _ || || |___| _| |_|
|_| |_| |_|___|_____|_| (_)
Oops, sorry! Now we really said it! Really sorry! I'm now offering to send
out chocolate and flowers so you stop crying and understand that we really
love you!
--
Ciao
Stefano
On Thursday 05 April 2007 18:48, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> I personally believe that you made a very poor choice by publically
> attacking a developer who did not even have working code yet. You chose
The GPL is not about "working code", it's about distribution.
And you did distribute our code under the BSD license, which is
a GPL violation.
I think this is dangerous, because the code is tainted and it
may even taint other codebases. For example if someone working
for opensolaris choses to import bcw into solaris, as he's rightfully
got the opinion that bcw is BSD licensed.
> not to mail him privately and point out your concerns.
>
> Marcus has chosen to give up.
I want to publically state the I do NOT FEEL GUILTY for this.
I offered several ways to solve the issue that would help bcw development
(offering to relicense my code).
If Marcus gave up that's a pity. But that's his choice. I respect that,
although I hoped to get a better solution.
> Can you please stop mailing us about this? It's over. Your beloved
> license has been protected, and it's over.
I tried to make clear that this is NOT about the "GPL Religion",
but you obviously did not get it.
To say it again. We did _not_ choose the GPL, because "everybody
does this" or because we are bound to the GPL in any way.
We had good reasons to chose it, but we _always_ left the opportunity
to have parts of it relicensed for you guys.
--
Greetings Michael.