While the title of Marc's email might be construed as flame bait, it is
disappointing to see that the generally very valid points he has made
(as both a BSD _and_ _GPL_ developer) are being ignored. To make it
simple try answering these two questions:
----
Question #1: Is it _ethical_ (legality aside) to take someone else's
actively maintained work (for example an OpenBSD driver) and make
changes which can not be shared/used by the original developer/maintainer?
Answer #1: Considering that the whole reason I personally choose the GPL
for some projects is to prevent this sort of one way street behavior
_away_ from the original OSS developers/contributors _my_ answer must
be; No it is not ethical.
----
Question #2: Is it _technically beneficial_ to branch an OSS work (for
example an OpenBSD driver) in such a way as to diminish the ability to
share contributions between projects?
Answer #2: It would be fascinating (and sad) to see an attempt at
justifying a yes response to this question.
Please don't let the rude language or defensiveness bought out by this
particular incident distract from doing the right thing. Just because
you legally can (or might be able to) do something doesn't make it right.
--Jonathan--
P.S. As a secondary concern; it could be legally dubious with some
governments to relicense an existing file from the OpenBSD license
(given that the copyright license must remain intact) -- though patches
could themselves _technically_ be GPL. Creating _new_ GPL files which
work _with_ the existing BSD licensed has no such ambiguity, but please
see questions #1 and #2 above -- is it the _right_ thing to do?
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