'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.

Comments

A Message From Bruce Perens

[Bruce Perens]

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

Re: A Message From Bruce Perens

[Bruce Perens]

Nothing here says that Perens made a cent for being sued. It says in the court papers

that his lawyers worked for about 900 hours and were paid for about 450 of them, at fair rates for lawyers.

Re:grsecurity

[phantomfive]

Grsecurity likes to claim they are secure, but at DEFCON last year, someone looked into it, and hacked it pretty easily, even installed DOOM on the device running it.

Re:GR Security now judged illegal?

[Xtifr]

If the patches are not in compliance with the GPL, then they're being distributed in violation of copyright law. Which is illegal, last I checked.

The GPL doesn't have to be "codified into law", because nothing else gives you permission to distribute the code in question. The only purpose of the GPL, really, is to provide people with a defense against infringement charges by the copyright holders. And technically, it contains no restrictions at all--it simply has limits on the otherwise-illegal things allows you to do. Anything copyright law allows, the GPL allows. So the only way to "violate the GPL" is to do something against the law.

That said, we still have no idea whether GR Security is violating the GPL (and thus copyright law). All we really know is that Bruce is entitled to his opinion.