On April 4, 2007, Linux software driver developer Michael Buesch revealed that other programmers working on the OpenBSD operating system had copied code licensed under GNU Public License v.2 (GPL), incorporated it into their own code, and released the result under the incompatible BSD license without asking permission. In addition to violating the terms of the GPL, which requires that the GPL license remain attached to any GPL’d code, OpenBSD’s actions have placed the open source code at risk to be used (and closed) by proprietary software vendors.
In response, OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt minimized the significance of the violation and criticized Buesch for making it a public issue:
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?
Theo de Raadt who has long held a reputation for rubbing people the wrong way — formerly kicked out of the NetBSD project and also described by Linus Torvalds as “difficult” — is doing himself no favours here. In justifying a blatant case of license violation, he’s certainly not creating an impression of rationality, and looks hypocritical given his scathing public statements about the Linux operating system in the past. In a June 2005 interview with Forbes magazine, de Raadt said: “It’s terrible. Everyone is using it, and they don’t realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, ‘This is garbage and we should fix it.’”
Garbage picker.
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