Re: [kernel-hardening] Stop the plagiarism

[Brad Spengler <spender@grsecurity.net>]

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> It's somewhat ironic that someone who repeatedly complains about his
> limited amount of time precluding upstreaming work somehow finds time to
> stealth-idle on IRC channels to find out when people are talking about him.

And your evidence is what exactly? That sounds like a statement of fact rather
than opinion.  Have you considered that there might be others in whatever
channels those are that disagree with you and happen to mention to me
ridiculous things that are said about me in public?

> You can't copyright an integer constant. There is little point in
> arguing over copyright on whole-tree cleanup work; things like
> converting to designated initializers aren't even, in my opinion
> (IANAL), clear-cut copyrightable changes. And you can't copyright ideas,
> so if someone reimplements a grsecurity feature without copying any of
> the code, that's entirely fair game copyright-wise.

Point me to where I claimed "copyright" over an integer constant.  I also
even agree the designated initializers changes aren't copyrightable.  My entire
point was simply mentioning where those changes come from, which is a moral
issue in these cases, not a copyright issue -- I'm sorry if you think
not violating copyright means one doesn't engage in plagiarism; the bar for
copyright is terribly low.  Credit is something people do that respect the
work that they're copying.  Same as we're not *required* to credit people
who report bugs to us, but we respect their time and so it's something we've
always done.  Also since not crediting would give the impression that
particular issue was found via some internal audit, which would be misleading.

> Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this, because with moves
> like the GCC plugin licensing shenanigans and the general licensing
> approach for grsecurity you've demonstrated that you're not above using
> ridiculous (and in my opinion license-violating) legal contortions to
> try to exert further control over usage of your software than the GPLv2
> allows;

I don't know, maybe to draw more attention for yourself in a way that 
doesn't require doing any real work and dig yourself into a deeper hole 
with more libel that you'll be held accountable for later?

When you and comex started making your plugin licensing claims we 
contacted the FSF ourselves given how damaging such claims are 
(particularly given that a few of them are now included in Linux).  It 
has been nearly 4 months now and despite repeated follow-ups, I still 
haven't received anything back more than an automated reply.  Likewise 
regarding some supposed claims by RMS which were published last year by 
internet troll mikeeusa -- I have been trying since June 3rd of last 
year to get any response from him, but have been unable to.  So when you 
claim we're violating the GPL by releasing some GCC plugins under GPLv2,
is that a claim of fact you're making?  Because last I checked, you're
not a GCC copyright holder, only the FSF is, so you don't even meet the
minimum threshold of being a person anyone should care about or listen to
wrt this topic.  I think you'd be wise to stop talking, because we've really
had enough of it.

> P.S. I had to reboot my router a few months ago, so I no longer have the
> old IP address that you had blocked from your web server. Feel free to
> remove that iptables rule now and shave a microsecond or two off your
> packet processing time.

Don't worry about it, there's nothing for a "grateful" user like yourself
to download anymore.  Boy, if I had more "grateful" users like yourself
obsessed with harrassing us on Twitter, Reddit, and IRC so that they
can go around and paint themselves as some kind of victim, I wouldn't
know what to do with myself.

-Brad

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