GPL vs BSD: Why Are People Fighting?

For the second time in six months, a flamefest has broken out between those who release software under the BSD (Berkely Software Distribution) licence and others who release software under the General Public Licence.

The first time, in April this year, a developer for a Linux wireless driver accused an OpenBSD developer of filching code and using it in a wireless driver for OpenBSD.

In the last week of August a second flamefest came about: this time, a Linux developer was accused of removing the BSD licence notice from a snippet of dual-licensed code and releasing that code solely under the GPL. You can read most of the saga here , beginning with the first message.

I won’t go into the details of the flamefest – if you, gentle reader, enjoy such things, read and enjoy.

To get an idea of why these people are at each others’ throats every now and then, one needs to understand a little bit about the two licences. Linux, the kernel, is released under the GPL.

The BSD licence gives anyone the freedom to take code released under it and re-use it in any system and lock it up altogether. Thus the makers of proprietary software love the BSD licence – they can take whatever they like, use it in their own proprietary applications and lock it up for good. No changes have to be released back.
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