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from the the-GPL-is-open-to-interpretation dept.
Grsecurity® is an extensive security enhancement to the Linux kernel that defends against a wide range of security threats through intelligent access control, memory corruption-based exploit prevention, and a host of other system hardening that generally require no configuration. It has been actively developed and maintained for the past 14 years. Commercial support for grsecurity is available through Open Source Security, Inc.
In a big red block at the top of their home page is the following warning:
Important Notice Regarding Public Availability of Stable Patches
Due to continued violations by several companies in the embedded industry of grsecurity®'s trademark and registered copyrights, effective September 9th 2015 stable patches of grsecurity will be permanently unavailable to the general public. For more information, read the full announcement.
And I thought GRSecurity was based on the GPL'd work called "Linux". Guess I was wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @10:42PM
GRsecurity is a derivative work. Why that matters is discussed way below.
Copyright allows you to restrict a work, what area of the law allows you to grant permission?
Property and Contract law.
The significance of this is discussed in other posts below.
Suffice to say: either spengler's license to modify linux can be revoked at will (barring estoppel) if he has permission as a license (property law), or extrinsic evidence that bears on the agreement (such as the intention of the parties, usage in trade of terms, course of dealings, etc) can be brought in to discover the full effect of the agreement (remeber: no integration clause here) since we would be proceeding under contract law (which is what you want if you want what linux is licensed under to be irrevokable). We can discover if all X contributors to linux intended derivative works to be closed in this manner, what the usage in trade was of these terms, what the course of dealings were vis a vis spengler and the linux rightsholders up till this time. Etc. It all bears to what the actual agreement is (if there is any to begin with).
If he has neither (another possibility), then his "grant" to modify the linux source code is just completely invalid from the start.
And before you dismiss all this, please study the basis of the law onwhich you base you documents and agreements.
Just because your techi friends repeat some dogma about OSS "license"s, doesn't mean they have a firm basis in law.
Guess why it takes years to get a law degree.