I feel like I may be the one defending the great Satan here (Theo). But I will state a few things so no one jumps the gun to fast.

Theo doesn't really need defending. He quite capable of doing that himself. Theo is passionate. A trait most people don't have and others can't deal with. Theo dispute was that the issue was everyone who was cc on the inital email by Michael Buesch. The code dispute was brought up on a driver that didn't work. And the tone of the initial email was at the very least condescending.

Theo defended what he felt was an attack on one of his developers. Something Theo is rightly passionate about. Theo did not dispute the code was there. He does dispute who wrote the code. He did take personally to defending one of his developers. Good for him.

I have seen the posts in this thread by others including Bruce Perens: Oh? So, if I take my record collection and commit it to a public CVS repository, that's going to be OK with RIAA, then? :-)

Actually if I couldn't play any of the music because the code it was written in didn't work. I don't think anyone would really say anything except your files don't work and therefore suck. I think the RIAA would have a tough time winning a prosecution just because you had a bunch of files labeled as music files. That doesn't mean the RIAA wouldn't try and you would probably not be happy about it. Theo didn't seem happy about what was being done to one of his developers.

Again the initial tone and the number of people cc in Michael's letter was the problem.

Many of you have said that Theo was upset about being caught with GPL code in his CVS. Well isn't this how other developers get to make commits and corrections to code?(I may be wrong here don't be afraid to correct me I can take it) So a driver that doesn't work and is under development has some GPL code in it. Wouldn't one of the commits be to mention there is some GPL code in the drive that may need to be dealt with? (Instead of sending a harshly worded letter and cc the world on it?)

I am not a developer but I have to admit if I were I would want be one for OpenBSD because I know that I am going to work with people who strive to do the best and have someone who has their backs.