[libreplanet-discuss] RMS Responded - GRsecurity is preventing others from employing their rights under version 2 the GPL to redistribute source code

[concernedfossdev]

RMS has weighed in:

Re: GRsecurity is preventing others from employing their rights under version 2 
the GPL to redistribute source code
Richard Stallman  (May 31 2016 10:27 PM)

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

If I understand right, this is a matter of GPL 2 on the Linux patches.
Is that right?  If so, I think GRsecurity is violating the GPL on
Linux.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.



------------------------------------------------
GRsecurity is preventing others from employing their rights under version 2 the 
GPL to redistribute
(by threatening them with a non-renewal of a contract to recive this patch to 
the linux kernel.)
(GRsecurity is a derivative work of the linux kernel (it is a patch))

People who have dealt with them have attested to this fact:
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/4grdtb/censorship_linux_developer_steals_page_from_
andi
"You will also lose the access to the patches in the form of grsec not renewing 
the contract. 
Also they've asked us (a Russian hosting company) for $17000+ a year for access 
their stable
patches. $17k is quite a lot for us. A question about negotiating a lower price 
was completely
ignored. Twice." -- fbt2lurker

And it is suggested to be the case here aswell:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4gxdlh/after_15_years_of_research_grsecuritys_rap_is_here
"Do you work for some company that pays for Grsecurity? If so then would you 
kindly excersise the
rights given to you by GPL and send me a tarball of all the latest patches and 
releases?" --
lolidaisuki
"sadly (for this case) no, i work in a human rights organization where we get 
the patches by a
friendly and richer 3rd party of the same field. we made the compromise to that 
3rd party to not
distribute the patches outside and as we deal with some critical situations i 
cannot afford to
compromise that even for the sake of gpl :/
the "dumber" version for unstable patches will make a big problem for several 
projects, i would
keep an eye on them. this situation cannot be hold for a long time" -- disturbio

Is this not tortious interference, on grsecurity's (Brad Spengler) part, with 
the quazi-contractual
relationship the sublicensee has with the original licensor?

(Also Note: the stable branch now contains features that will never make it to 
the "testing"
branch, and are not allowed to be redistributed, per the scheme mentioned above 
(which has been
successful: not one version of the stable branch has been released by anyone, 
even those asked to
do so, since the scheme has been put in place (they say they cannot as they 
cannot lose access to
the patch as that may cost the lives and freedom of activists in latin 
america)))
https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/726101158561882112
@xoreipeip @grsecurity they call it a "demo" version "20:14 < spender> what's 
in the public version
is < 1/5th the size of the full version"
oreipeip @grsecurity "20:21 < spender> also it wouldn't be as fast as the 
commercial version [...]
there are missing optimization passes"