Grsecurity stops issuing public patches, citing trademark abuse

by
Anonymous Coward
in linux on (#KT69)
story imageThe gurus behind the popular and respected Linux kernel hardening effort Grsecurity will stop providing their stable patches to the public. In future, only paying sponsors will get access to stable patches to shore up their kernels' defenses. The test series, unfit for production use, will however continue to be available, to avoid impacting the Gentoo Hardened and Arch Linux communities. The project's full source code will still be released to the public at large, but non-sponsors will have to pick through every update to find out what's applicable to them.

The whole situation stems from WindRiver, a subsidiary of Intel, which "has been using the grsecurity name all over its marketing material and blog posts to describe their backported, unsupported, unmaintained version in a version of Linux with other code modifications that haven't been evaluated by us for security impact." After spending several thousand on legal fees, faced with "a huge legal team, the capability to drag out the case for years" and a threat to request "all available sanctions and attorneys' fees" were the lawsuit to proceed against them, Grsecurity decided pursuing the case through the courts was not practical.

Re: Wrong (Score: -1, Troll)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-10 15:47 (#M1MX)

Some points: The GPL's own website talks about the current version, v3, which rectify many issues with v2. Linux is licensed under v2. Can't be re-licensed because there are so many copyright holders. It's stuck with v2.

The GPL's own website has a vested interest in promoting the GPL.
The GPL's own website is not trained in the law.

>So just to clarify for you again:
Indeed, you wouldn't know who to trust, being of the laity, never having studied law.
It's all greek to you as you are truely ignorant and thus must simply rely on authorities to trust and distill the information for you.

If I were near you I would laugh in you face, and we'd see what happened next.
I think you've been rude to me so maybe there would be a fight.
I'd try to gouge out your eyes with my thumbs in that case.
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