Re: Will no-one sue GrSecurity for their blatant GPL violation (of GCC and the linux kernel)? - BP and EFF have addressed

[nipponmail@firemail.cc]

Bruce Perens and the EFF have addressed this, it is indeed a violation 
to add an additional restrictive term such as that: they are threatening 
a penalty, using a negative covenant, if the customer utilizes the 
permissions granted to him (and GrSecurity) by the Copyright holder of 
the original Work. GrSecurity does not have an independent legal right 
to create non-separable derivative works _at_all_, they only have 
permission to do so IF abiding by the terms the Copyright holder set 
regarding HIS Work: which are NO additional restrictive terms. Here 
GrSecurity HAS added an additional restrictive term: NO free 
redistribution of the derivative work: and they enforce this via 
penalty:

perens.com/2017/06/28/warning-grsecurity-potential-contributory-infringement-risk-for-customers/

Page 10 onward has discussion on the copyright issue aswell:
perens.com/static/OSS_Spenger_v_Perens/0_2018cv15189/docs1/pdf/18.pdf

(And yes, IAAL)


On 2019-11-04 17:36, ams@gnu.org wrote:
> One is not under obligation to guarantee that new versions are
> distributed to someone, which also means obligations can be terminated
> for any reason.  So while grsecurity might not be doing the morally
> and ethically right thing, I do not think they are violating the GNU
> GPL.  You're still free to redistribute the patches, but grsecurity
> isn't under obligation to give you future updates.
> 
> Their agreement text is located at
> https://grsecurity.net/agree/agreement_faq