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'Open Source Security' Loses in Court, Must Pay $259,900 To Bruce Perens (theregister.co.uk)
Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3872. Now he's just won a legal victory in court. "Open Source Security, maker of the grsecurity Linux kernel patches, has been directed to pay Bruce Perens and his legal team almost $260,000 following a failed defamation claim," reports The Register. Slashdot reader Right to Opine writes:
The order requires Spengler and his company to pay $259,900.50, with the bill due immediately rather than allowing a wait for the appeal of the case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's attorneys will represent Perens during OSS/Spengler's appeal of the case.
Perens was sued for comments on his blog and here on Slashdot that suggested that OSS's Grsecurity product could be in violation of the GPL license on the Linux kernel. The court had previously ruled that Perens' statements were not defamatory, because they were statements by a non-attorney regarding an undecided issue in law. It is possible that Spengler is personally liable for any damages his small company can't pay, since he joined the case as an individual in order to preserve a claim of false light (which could not be brought by his company), removing his own corporate protection.
Perens was sued for comments on his blog and here on Slashdot that suggested that OSS's Grsecurity product could be in violation of the GPL license on the Linux kernel. The court had previously ruled that Perens' statements were not defamatory, because they were statements by a non-attorney regarding an undecided issue in law. It is possible that Spengler is personally liable for any damages his small company can't pay, since he joined the case as an individual in order to preserve a claim of false light (which could not be brought by his company), removing his own corporate protection.
I am very lucky to have my attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and my attorneys from O'Melveny and Meyers who won the lower court case and will continue to help EFF during the appeal.
My attorneys have requested that I not comment about the case at this time. Obviously, I'd love to discuss it with you sometime, when it's all over.
Valerie, Stanley and I are doing well and send you our best wishes.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
...just made a pile of cash. Whether Bruce Perens himself did remains to be seen.
Widespread hatred of Trump makes people suing for defamation impossible, otherwise Trump would be owed ELVENTY JILLION DOLLARS.
If I understand correctly, Bruce has been claiming that GR security isn't following the licenses - in other words is breaking the law. Loss of this court case could then be effectively seen as a court judgement that GR Security's patches are illegal. Has anyone read the court judgement in enough detail and with enough understanding to confirm that?
INAL and I'm certainly not your lawyer but I think that if I was using GR security's patches I would make sure I had no legal link (such as a contract or a payment) to them. I'd also make sure that I had the source and I didn't distribute the patches to anyone else or even make copies within my company.
According to TFA, the $260k was awarded due to California's anti-SLAPP law. However, this is half of what Perens asked for to cover legal fees. I'm really wondering why he chose to spend over $500k on lawyers, for a defamation and business interference case. Surely the default judgement wouldn't even be that much money? Posting a comment to slashdot leads to half a million dollars in legal fees for the poster? Doesn't anyone else see this as insane? Imagine how many slashdotters would be bankrupted daily by various posts about Theranos, Microsoft, Systemd, Yahoo, Google, or various government officials, if robo-lawyers automatically filed charges for every arguably-defamatory post about them, leading to $500k legal fees each.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
My, I should have gotten an account like a year before I did... I remember when Rob told me about /. on #Linux96 and so I was like, ok sure I'll check it out... then it became Slashdot... and finally I was like, damn, perhaps I should have an account. I could have had a cool reader #. :( Maybe even in the double digits lol.
Ok, yeah this comment adds exactly zero to the conversation. Sorry.
I do want to say I remember when Bruce and Eric were coming out of the office after they were having meetings about this stuff when I worked at VA... I'd be like "Larry, wtf were they doing in there?" and he'd be like "Shut up Trae and get back to work." Actually, no, he would just tell me what they were doing; Larry is a super nice guy. I'm old, I'm rambling and I just wanted to post.
Jeff, Rob, etc... if you read this, I finally turned 50. Yeah... I'm getting old AF. Miss all you guys, hope you are well.
geeky stuff I'm proud to have been a part of: linux.com / themes.org / sourceforge.net / sicnus.com
What is with all this attitude? He was sued and fought back with an Anti-Slapp suit. I am happy he prevailed. Anyone who is pro free speech should be as well.
3872? Punk kid needs to get off my lawn. :)
He's standing up not just for himself but everybody.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In a fair and honest system these two would settle their differences in the Thunderdome.
Simple, quick, and affordable.
Every day a new story about failed security on Linux...
n/t
I think grsecurity is a great set of patches to the linux kernel, most of which were originally provided by others and integrated into his combo-patch set. I think it was better when he offered it for free and only charged commercial users. It would be like linus all of sudden start making linux a pay-only piece of software. Most people would be turned off or have a bad taste in their mouths. He should realize that these patches, things like untrusted path execution, /proc restrictions and so on, although they are great concepts, they were initially provided by other people as separate sets of patches to the linux kernel offered for free.
Redhat and their blobbed changesets.
Just to get this out of the way, while I disagree strongly with Bruce about the merits of his claim, I do not in any way support the defamation claim against him for saying it. A differing view is not the same as a defamatory statement.
That said, the idea that a set of modifications to a copyright product, distributed separately, constitutes a derivative work is terrible policy and is philosophically counter to the 'freedom to tinker' that the tech community holds dear. I don't know if it is is the law right now (and absent. a very expensive test case, we aren't likely to find out), but just as a matter of policy I think it would be a Very Bad Ideaâ.
Consider, for instance, a student or researcher that patches the software in a commercial digital microscope to improve image quality or performance in a fashion. Let's further suppose they release the patch under some F/OSS license both to benefit other users of the product but also as part of disclosing their methods for the purpose of scientific integrity and reproducibility. It's undisputed that the company selling the microscope retains copyright. in the original software, but under Perens' claim they also have rights to the patch as a derivative work.
To me, this cannot be right. A modification to a work, distributed separately, is not derivative. It is not a copy with some changes, it is just the changes. To say that one violates copyright without distributing a single bit of the underlying work inflates the power of rights holders at the expense of everyone else, in a regime that's already quite solicitous of the rights holders.
[ Of course, GRSecurity are not the greatest poster boys for this claim. But bad examples should not make bad policy. The claim here is a one that has broad implications beyond the individual lawsuit-happy jerks involved this time. ]
Spengler: You have no chance to survive. Make your time!
Judge: Yawn. lolwhat? omgwtfbbq. Next case!
Love grsec, but Spengler is such a prick.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
...Coward need a VPN to post on Slashdot? I loath Imperial entanglements.
Post your address and phone number.
Was pretty confident that the suit would fail, too bad it takes $500k to make the court see common sense.