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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.
"Bruce Perens defamed the plaintiffs" and "the plaintiffs violated copyright law" is not a true dichotomy. Zero, one, or both statements could be true in the abstract. This court case only resolved the first question.
Some of you trolls are real assholes. Bruce has worked tirelessly on the OSS world. His name is obviously well known amongst the top 10 in it.
/.,
For some of you to rip into him, is just sad.
Seriously, it is long past time to make the code so as to lower the trolls. Make it so that unless we are moderating, that we can skip ACs below a certain point. Hey, if a moderator brings them up to say 2 or 3, I will want to see them. OTHERWISE, why bother. I get sick of reading so many lies and crap from the trolls.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
He's standing up not just for himself but everybody.
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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.
"I am very lucky to have my attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation"
Yes you are, considering they're just publicity whores like the ACLU.
You only got them on your side because of your name. Many others that could've used them are rotting away in prison because they're not 'high profile enough.'
Maybe you should draw some attention to that fact while you've got the publicity.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.