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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 30 2020, @10:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the justice-in-action dept.

From The Register:

After three years of legal wrangling, the defamation lawsuit brought by Brad Spengler and his company Open Source Security (OSS) against open-source pioneer Bruce Perens has finally concluded.... Spengler and OSS sued Perens for a June 2017 blog post in which Perens ventured the opinion that grsecurity, Open Source Security's Linux kernel security enhancements, could expose customers to potential liability under the terms of the General Public License (GPL).

OSS says that customers who exercise their rights to redistribute its software under the GPL will no longer receive software updates – the biz wants to be paid for its work, a problem not really addressed by the GPL. Perens, the creator of the open-source definition, pointed out that section six of the GPLv2 prohibits modifications of the license terms.

In December 2017, San Francisco magistrate judge Laurel Beeler determined that Perens had expressed an opinion as allowed under American law and dismissed the defamation claim. Perens then sought to recoup legal expenses under California's Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) statute, [and] a month later he was awarded more than $526,000 in damages.

Spengler and OSS then appealed, and managed to get the award reduced to about $260,000, but not overturned.... Perens gets nothing personally for his trouble, but his legal team will be paid. O'Melveny & Myers LLP will receive $262,303.62 for the district court litigation (fees and costs) and $2,210.36 for the appeal (costs) while the Electronic Frontier Foundation will be paid $34,474.35 (fees) and $1,011.67 (costs) for its role in the appeal.

Previously:


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Saturday April 04 2020, @07:57AM (3 children)

    by loonycyborg (6905) on Saturday April 04 2020, @07:57AM (#978982)

    I think a court would be very suspicions of this legal theory because it looks like obvious end run over Linux Kernel devs being unwilling to sue grsecurity themselves. Also GPL by itself cannot mandate anyone to distribute anything. So even if GPL violation were shown to exist then the part of grsecurity not providing the patches to the customer would be still valid. In fact it would be the only the contract part that is still valid. They're always in the right to not distribute their unauthorized derivative work.

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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 06 2020, @06:16PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Monday April 06 2020, @06:16PM (#979725) Journal

    The question would be who actually suffers the damage. If it's just copyright then the end user isn't damaged. If the end customer is damaged then it shouldn't matter to the Linux devs.

    GPL (the version in question) doesn't mandate distribution. It mandates no interference of someone to distribute. And the GPL prevents exactly what you say because it explicitly gives the right to distribute derivative works without need to seek an authorization. Thus by stating that a derivative work can't be distributed they are in violation of their own agreements to use the code, and trying to enforce that is a tort by virtue of interfering with what is clearly a legally permissible action of the licensing chain.

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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 06 2020, @06:19PM (1 child)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Monday April 06 2020, @06:19PM (#979727) Journal

    Lots of "theys" in one of my sentences. Trying again (not that it matters)… "Thus by stating that a derivative work can't be distributed grsecurity is in violation of grsecurity's own agreements to use the Linux kernel code. By their trying to enforce no distribution of their derivative work, when the GPL explicitly authorizes that, is a tort by virtue of interfering with what is clearly a legally permissible action of the GPL 2.0 licensing chain."

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    • (Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday April 07 2020, @12:13AM

      by loonycyborg (6905) on Tuesday April 07 2020, @12:13AM (#979815)

      It's still off. grsecurity wasn't in any agreement with kernel devs. GPL is a license, not a contract. grsecurity are not enforcing no distribution. They merely refuse to distribute. GPL isn't forcing distribution. GPL can only revoke copyright license conditionally. Nothing less, nothing more.